Question

Study the passage below and answer the questions.
For decades, the Government has grappled with India's health care shortcomings by introducing various programmes. Despite some measure of success, the problem of universal health care access continues to fester like a recalcitrant sore. While there are several reasons for the lack of complete success in improving health care access, the overall problem may lie in the pursuit of improper priorities. To address access issued headon, radically improving primary health care in India should be top priority. A steep shortage in primary health care centres (PHCs) across India is the prime reason why villagers are forced to trek almost 20 km to reach the nearest PHC. This may still be of little use, because most PHCs are perpetually plagued by a supply and staff shortage, making matters worse for sick patients who expend time, energy and resources to reach the PHC. For people from towns and semi-urban areas seeking modern medical care the situation is no different since they need to travel to the nearest city. Despite 7,50,000 doctors registered with the Medical Council of India, the ground reality is that about 2,00,000 aren't active anymore. This means India has only one doctor to treat 2,000 people, instead of one doctor for every 1,000. Improving those figures will take time because the number of medical and nursing colleges cannot be hiked overnight to boost the output of medical graduates. The time has come to firmly recognise that health and health care issues cannot be left solely to the Government or public sector entities if India is to meet its health care targets including Millennium Development Goals for 2015. Such immense investments and specialised skills could best be tapped if public-private partnerships were promoted and Private companies encouraged to establish health care infrastructure in all geographies- urban, semi-urban and rural - particularly where primary health care is concerned. Estimated indicate that only 320 million people or 26 percent of India's population are covered under some form of medical insurance - public or private. In other words, large uncovered sections of the populace are forced to meet medical costs via out-ofpocket spends, causing immense financial burden and pushing many families into poverty.