Context: Recently, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has released the report of a survey titled ‘Health in India’, whose main objective was to gather basic quantitative information on India’s health sector.
Key findings of the report

• Health condition of India-Around 7.5 % of Indians reported that they were suffering from ailments.
• While in rural India only 6.8 % said that they were suffering from an ailment, this number in urban India was 9.1 %.
• Health information of religious communities- The Zoroastrian community remains the most susceptible to ailments. Results from the National Sample Survey (NSS)’s 75th Round released in July show that 31.1 % of Zoroastrians reported that they were suffering from an ailment at the time the survey was conducted.
• This number for other communities is: Jains, 11.2 %; Sikhs 11 %; Christians 10.5 %; Muslims 8.1 %; Buddhists 8 %; and Hindus 7.2 %.

Sex-based classification: The survey shows that women remain more susceptible to suffering from ailments than men.

• In rural India, 6.1 % of males said that they were suffering from ailments, while 7.6 % of rural women said the same.
• While 8.2 % of urban males said that they were sick, 10 % of urban females said the same.

Additional Information

Defination of Ailment

• The survey defines ailment as any deviation from a person’s state of physical and mental well-being. The ‘Proportion of Persons who Responded as Ailing’ (PPRA) in a 15-day period when they were approached by the surveyors, were registered as those suffering from ailments.