Pune: The city among one of the worst-hit cities by COVID-19 has bagged number one spot in health infrastructure-related parameters including a number of hospital beds, air and water quality, a report by Housing.com revealed. The report further adds, Pune still struggles with public healthcare delivery, as is highlighted by the fact that it is one of the cities with high COVID-19 active cases.
While Pune ranks 1 in the country, Delhi-NCR ranks at bottom of the table, according to the real estate portal, owned by US-based News Corp and its Australian group firm REA. The company on Wednesday released its report titled ‘State of Healthcare in India’. "When it comes to health infrastructure, Pune is the most equipped city in India, offering 3.5 hospital beds per 1,000 people," the report adds. The top-ranked city also scored expressively high on parameters such as ease of living, water quality, and performance and sustainable initiatives taken by its administration.
The report states, “In response to the growing number of residents and global tech companies, many leading private hospital services have come up in Pune. Not only this, but the city is also becoming a hub for health tech startups due to the presence of a talent pool from high-quality medical and engineering institutes.”
ALL ABOUT PUNE
· Population: 5.6 million
· Area (PMR): 7,256 sqkm
· No of beds/1,000 population: 3.5
· State average: 2.2
· Total beds: 18,000-20,000
The report ranks health infrastructure in India’s most urbanised eight cities including Mumbai Metropolitan Region(MMR), Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kolkata— on the basis of Housing.com’s City Health Card. These rankings are benchmarked against factors such as number of hospital beds per 1,000 people, air-water quality, sanitation, liveability index and 40 per cent weightage has been given to number of hospital beds.
With nearly 3.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people, Ahmedabad is ranked second, while Karnataka’s capital city, Bengaluru, is ranked third in spite of a high number of hospital beds per 1,000 people and its top ranking in the ease of living index.
The Delhi-National Capital Region (Delhi-NCR), which covers the national capital, Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida and other regions, sits at the bottom of the table, initially because of the region’s poor scores on air and water quality, sanitation and presentation of municipal bodies. Mumbai Metropolitan Region ranks fourth on the Housing.com’s City Health Card, with factors such as the number of beds, air quality, and liveability declining its overall score down. Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata occupy the fifth, sixth and seventh positions, respectively.
Mani Rangarajan, Group COO of Housing.com, Makaan.com and PropTiger.com commented, “India, which is the third-largest economy in Asia, needs to significantly increase its spending on healthcare. This has been made eminently clear as the country is currently struggling to keep its people safe from the ongoing second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.”
Country’s financial capital Mumbai and its metropolitan region (which is also the largest residential real estate market in India with a transactional value of $2.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021) ranked fourth on the Housing.com City Health Card, with parameters such as the number of beds, air quality, and liveability bringing its overall score down.
Ankita Sood, Head of Research, Housing.com and PropTiger, said the country spends only 3.5 per cent of its GDP on healthcare, as opposed to 10-18 per cent spent by developed nations. “The gravity of the gap is manifested in the not so encouraging statistics on the number of hospital beds available per thousand people, which in India is abysmally low at 1.4 beds as against the global average of 3.2,” she explains.
India needs to focus on building quality healthcare infrastructure, he added. Stating that quality housing remains integral to health, Rangarajan stated that states should come up with more reformative measures to ensure a larger number of its people are able to afford housing, which acts as a precautionary measure against health risks.
