Tribal Health Infrastructure and Performance in Odisha: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

A sound health is a pre-requisite element for human development. Though health is considered having biological backdrops and ramifications, but it is necessarily a bio-psycho-social concept engulfing and impacting the whole of human actions. With life style changes, the earliest concept of complete biological, mental and social wellbeing is challenged and spiritual health is added along with the coping mechanism to address the health issues. In this context, tribal health is an area which is historically neglected. From literature surveys, it can be found that throughout the length and breadth of the state, and country, tribal health infrastructure and performances have been neglected, in both social infrastructure as well as physical infrastructure. But time has come to rectify the historical injustice being imparted to sections of society in providing all necessary healthcare benefits. This paper using secondary sources has found that tribal in Odisha has no basic infrastructure, mainly in some remote inaccessible areas. So citing authentic data from govt. reports, the paper suggests that a handful of measures can do the needful to the lot of the tribal such as relaxing the population-healthcare ratio, mobile health, community health officers etc. it also recommends further research on this area.