RESUMO
Understanding socioeconomic inequalities in non-communicable disease prevalence and preventive care usage can help design effective action plans for health equality programs among India's aging population. Hypertension (HTN) and diabetes mellitus (DM) are frequently used as model non-communicable diseases for research and policy purposes as these two are the most prevalent NCDs in India and are the leading causes of mortality. For this investigation, data on 31,464 older persons (aged 60 years and above) who took part in the Longitudinal Ageing Survey of India (LASI: 2017-2018) were analyzed. The concentration index was used to assess socioeconomic inequality whereas relative inequalities indices were used to compare HTN, DM, and preventive care usage between the different groups of individuals based on socioeconomic status. The study reveals that wealthy older adults in India had a higher frequency of HTN and DM than the poor elderly. Significant differences in the usage of preventive care, such as blood pressure/blood glucose monitoring, were found among people with HTN or DM. Furthermore, economic position, education, type of work, and residential status were identified as important factors for monitoring inequalities in access to preventive care for HTN and DM. Disparities in non-communicable diseases can be both a cause and an effect of inequality across social strata in India.
RESUMO
To protect our masses, primary care institutes were developed in many countries, all over the globe. In the previous era, labour was valuable to produce crops and protect native countries from enemies as no substitute for raw labour was available to do these jobs. The scenario has changed after the era of automation. After the agricultural revolution, technological revolution took place. Hence, most of the manual jobs in agriculture sector and industry sector were automated. As a result, "new" type of jobs has emerged which was based, so far, on mainly of cognitive skills, e.g., learning, analysing, communication, and understanding human emotions. As the technology is advancing day by day, the role of humans as individual is becoming less and less except for some extraordinary persons or elite groups. Now the important question is, will elites and governments will go on valuing every human being even when it pays no economic dividends? Will the development of mass medicine/primary care will continue? Will governments/bureaucrats fund adequately for the protection of the health of these useless classes merely on the humanitarian ground? We assume that due to technological advancement and greater role of elite classes, the norm of shifting non-normal people to normality may not require any more, the previous practice of treatment (health for all concept) may not repeat in future and it is quite natural. Experiences from Japan highlight that society may prefer theses elites to the useless average class. The gap between the two classes regarding availing health facilities may widen further. This is because the government may focus more on the health of elites than common masses. One step further the government/ bureaucrat may try for immortality/divinity for this elite class, at any cost for maintaining supremacy over the poor masses.