107 SIX Activity status, morbidity patterns and hospitalisation in India Harihar Sahoo Background Trends in life expectancy across both developed and developing countries show that people are living longer. In line with these global developments mortality rates in India have decreased, which has led to significant gains in life expectancy. Figure 6.1 shows that the crude birth rate1 has more than halved over the last century. There has also been a steady fall in crude death rates2 from a high of 47 in 1911–21 to a low of just over 7 in 2010. This fall in
The rapid economic growth of the past few decades has radically transformed India’s labour market, bringing millions of former agricultural workers into manufacturing industries, and, more recently, the expanding service industries, such as call centres and IT companies.
Alongside this employment shift has come a change in health and health problems, as communicable diseases have become less common, while non-communicable diseases, like cardiovascular problems, and mental health issues such as stress, have increased.
This interdisciplinary work connects those two trends to offer an analysis of the impact of working conditions on the health of Indian workers that is unprecedented in scope and depth.
pathologies will result in major shifts in morbidity patterns. These, coupled with the continuing advance of high-cost medical technologies, mean that we will almost inevitably see cost inflation levels in health services running considerably higher than national averages. Faced with the tensions between expansionary pressures within and without the health service, and macro-economic pressures to control expen- diture, the government in this country has tended to respond in two ways. The first is a search for increased efficiency, often associated with attempts to shift the
increasing. Third, though some attempts have been made in identifying the risk factors of NCDs, no study has examined the links between occupation and diseases pattern in India. Thus, understanding the role of occupational differentials in NCDs is essential for reducing inequalities in health. In Chapter 6, Dr Sahoo examined the association between activity status, morbidity patterns and hospitalisation in India. He found differences in disease patterns and rates of hospitalisation across regions and by economic activity status using the 60th round of National
