India yet to achieve global goals in healthcare: Murthy

Hyderabad: Though India has made tremendous strides in healthcare sector with increased life expectancy, it has a long way to go to reach the global standards, said Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy today.

Quoting the World Bank reports in a lecture at BioAsia, he said though the infant mortality rate has come down, India missed the “Millennium Development Goals”.

“In India Life expectancy in India has increased from just 45 years in 1960 to 67 in 2010. While the progress has been steady, India still lags way behind comparatively with countries including China and Brazil. These are the countries which have invested considerably more in healthcare.

Overall, we must say that India has made considerable progress but we still have long way to go and to catch up with our neighbours and global comparatives,” Murthy said.

He said there is huge disparity in terms of performance between South India and North and North eastern states of India. He also expressed concern over the rise in diseases such as dengue and chikungunya.

“What is somewhat concerning is that we fall behind even our small neighbours like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in public health issues. As per the World Bank report Indian infant mortality rate has decreased by 25 points between 1995 and 2015.

However the sad point is the millennium development goal has not been met. Additionally there are huge disparities among Indian states with some of them performing better between Southern states and North and North eastern states,” he further said.