New Delhi: An international medical journal has decried the Narendra Modi government's pledge made earlier this year to increase India's healthcare spending from the current 1.3 per cent to 2.5 per cent of the gross domestic product, calling it "lack of ambition". "We are disappointed by the lack of ambition of Modi's government to invest only 2.5 per cent of its GDP into healthcare by 2025, when the global average for countries is about 6 per cent," The Lancet, among the world's leading medical journals, said. The Union health ministry had in March this year outlined a new health policy setting the 2.5 per cent goal which, analysts have pointed out, merely iterates a target set 15 years ago without clarity on the roadmap. The Lancet, in an editorial accompanying a research report that outlines India's burden of diseases for the first time at the state level, said state initiatives in health should not diminish the responsibility of the federal government to increase public investments in health. "Until the federal government in India takes health as seriously as many other nations do, India will not fulfil either its national or global potential."

Source: The Telegraph November 14, 2017 21:56 UTC