Capacity Creation in Health Infrastructure and their Outcomes: A Study in Spatial Disparity in Assam

Health sector development is highly correlated with the level of human development of a region and is an important factor determining the efficiency of the human resource of a country. In fact, there is a strong nexus between economic growth and human development which again depends on an efficient health sector. In this backdrop, the rationale for a detailed exploration of capacity creation in health and its outcome in terms of attainments in health parameters appears to be strong. This paper seeks to explore capacity creation in the health sector and examine how it has affected health outcomes in the Indian state of Assam. This is sought to be exercised through the construction of three independent indices and one composite index. The indices have been constructed on three dimensions, namely, Health Infrastructure, Health Manpower, and Health Outcome. The composite health index so constructed unfortunately exposes the poor attainments of the state in all the three dimensions considered. Moreover, health outcomes in Assam is extremely asymmetrical with high attainments in a few districts as opposed to poor performance in the majority of the remaining districts. Though it must be stated that the attainments indicated by the indices presents only a partial picture of the health infrastructure and manpower in the state as the study domain includes only the public interventions while ignoring the installed capacity in the private sector.