Hyderabad: When it comes to health infrastructure and delivery system, Hyderabad ranks fifth in a list of India eight prime cities, shows a report by leading online real estate firm Housing.com. As part of its recent report titled “State of Healthcare in India: Indian cities through the lens of healthcare”, the Elara technologies-owed online real estate firm has assigned ratings to the country’s eight mega cities under its Housing.com’s City Health Card list.

Housing.com’s City Health Card list is topped by Pune, while Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai stand at second, third and fourth positions, respectively. Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi-NCR are ranked sixth, seventh and eighth in the list.

Although Hyderabad fares better than other metros in terms of air quality, sanitation and waste management, the rapid influx of population has added stress over the water supply, with demand exceeding the supply leading to water shortage, pulling down its overall ranking, the report said.

The city has 2.9 hospital beds per 1,000 population, with a total tally of 24,000-26,000 beds for a population of 8.6 million, that includes private and government hospital beds and the additional beds currently being augmented for pandemic have not been included in this, says the report.

In terms of healthcare, the city follows a similar lopsided development with most prominent services concentrated in western and central suburbs.

The “Housing.com City Health Card” was prepared by benchmarking the top-8 cities against important parameters such as — number of hospital beds per thousand population, air quality, water quality and availability of Sanitation & solid waste management, Ease of living index, municipal performance index and sustainable initiatives.

 “As quality housing remains integral to health, states should come up with more reformative measures to ensure a larger number of its citizens are able to afford housing, which acts as a preventive measure against health risks. Though developing better healthcare infrastructure will require a well thought-out medium-term plan, and would take some time to build, states could immediately launch measures in the form of stamp duty reductions to provide their citizens better protection against health hazards in the form of affordable housing and better community living which has easy access to all amenities,” said Mr. Mani Rangarajan, Group COO, Housing.com, Makaan.com and PropTiger.com.

Recall here that Hyderabad is the 24th best city to live in among 111 cities In India as per the Ease of Living Index 2020. The city also gained prominence as a global pharmaceutical hub in the on-going pandemic due presence of major firms developing a vaccine and international connectivity for export of the same.

Along with pharmaceuticals, the IT industry has witnessed rapid growth in Hyderabad due to business-friendly policies initiatives such as the establishment of Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Limited (TSIICL) and TSiPass offering single-window clearances.

The report that provides a perspective on nations’ preparedness in terms of providing health services to its people, also states that India is among the countries with the least public health spending and high out-of-pocket expenditure.

According to the report, India spent only 3.5% of its GDP on healthcare in 2018, as compared to developed countries like the US, the UK, Japan, Germany, and Canada which spent nearly 10–18% of their GDP on healthcare. This spending includes both the public healthcare spending and out-of-pocket expenses. 

For the City Health Card methodology, hospitals with more than 100 beds have been considered. The data available for each hospital are taken from government sources and/or official hospitals’ websites.