Health Economics Case Study

Study of health economics is one of the most important disciplines of economics today. Health is one of the most important fundamental human rights. Health is defined by different professionals in different ways. Medical professionals define health in terms of illness, which, in turn is expressed in terms of mental or physical disorders. World health organization does not consider health only as absence of disease rather it defines health as complete physical, mental and social well being. The status of health has an important effect on economic scenario of a country as well as the globe also. An improved state of health leads to a better condition of the economy. Similarly, an adverse state of health can deteriorate the position of economic

India is no exception in this regard. The country adopted various health related initiatives to develop the health scenario and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Despite the enormous efforts, the health issues are still existent worldwide. Researchers conducted various studies to investigate the reasons behind this backwardness. Fay et al., (2005), found in their study that other than the traditional variables like income, asset, education etc. the variable like health infrastructure has an important role to play in the health outcome of the children. Woman’s status, particularly the autonomy of woman has an important impact on infant mortality and child immunisation (Boehmer and Williamson, 1996; Bloom et al., 2001). The poor health condition of a mother has a detrimental effect on her child also. Various studies have revealed that the economic status of any country as well as a family has enormous impact on child immunisation. The expenditure on health sector is an important determinant of child immunisation (Arik and Arik, 2009). From the various studies it is revealed that there are various factors that influence mothers’ health and child

As today’s children are the future parents of society. To improve the health condition of mothers and children all the countries are working widely. Various initiatives were taken by the countries to control maternal and child mortality. Despite of the enormous efforts every year about 10.6 million children and 529000 mothers are dying because of avoidable diseases (World Health Report, 2005). Mothers’ health and child health are very closely related to each other. In developing or under developed countries the health of mothers’ is very poor and this results in poor health status of children also. Health status of any country is dependent on economic growth of that country. It was demonstrated from the empirical studies that the richer countries were on an average healthier than the low income countries (Sahoo, 2014). The poor health status of children leads to economic underdevelopment of the country. The unhealthy children could not contribute to human resource stock of the nation and thus the country is adversely affected. The study of health has become so important that a separate discipline started as health economics. The aim of health economics is to ensure efficient use of limited resources to get an optimum level of health outcome. Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) is one of the burning issues of health sector of an economy. The mortality rate of a country reflects the health