TL;DR: In 2025, 13.1% of Indians reported being ill in any given 15-day period, nearly double the 7.5% recorded in 2017–18. Out-of-pocket hospitalisation costs rose 70% to ₹34,064 per case. Health insurance coverage tripled in rural India. The diseases driving hospitalisation have fundamentally shifted from infections toward chronic, lifestyle-linked conditions.

Context

Every few years, India’s National Statistics Office conducts a full-scale survey of how its population is getting sick, who is treating them, and at what cost. The 80th Round of the National Sample Survey, conducted across all of 2025, is the eighth such exercise, stretching back to 1973. It covered 1,39,732 households across rural and urban India, over a 12-month period, making it one of the most comprehensive snapshots of how a billion-plus people experience health.

The last full survey was conducted in 2017–18. Seven years is a long gap for a country that added hundreds of millions to its middle class, launched its largest health insurance programme (Ayushman Bharat), and lived through a pandemic. The 2025 numbers, released in April 2026, capture what changed.

In this story, we shall look at some of the key findings of the survey.

Who compiles this data?

This data is compiled by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) and is published in the form of survey reports.

Where can I download clean & structured data related to Health survey in India?

Clean, standardised, structured, and ready-to-use datasets on health surveys and the relevant key indicators are available on Dataful.

Key Insights

1 in 8 Indians reported being unwell in 2025 survey (80^th Round)

The headline number in this survey is stark: 13.1% of India’s population reported illness in a 15-day window (Percentage of people responded as ailing (PPRA) during the last 15-day period (includes chronic & non-chronic ailment), expressed as a percentage of the total population. That’s roughly 1 in 8 people, on any given fortnight, feeling sick enough to self-report to a government enumerator. In 2017–18 (75^th Round), it was 1 in 13. What explains this significant increase?

The survey has been conducted eight times since 1973. In every single round, the reported ailing rate has risen. From 5.5% in 1995 (52^nd Round), to 8.8% in 2004 (60^th Round), to 8.9% in 2014 (71^st Round), to 6.8% in 2017-18, to 13.1% in 2025.  But do these numbers really mean Indians are getting a lot sicker?

Part of it could be genuine: a rising burden of non-communicable diseases means more people are chronically unwell. Part could be demographic, an older population that wasn’t here in the same numbers as before. And part could likely be survey-methodology effects: greater health awareness and expanded insurance coverage may prompt more people to acknowledge and articulate their illness in a household survey. Rising literacy and smartphone penetration mean that conditions that have always existed are now being named and counted.

But even accounting for these factors, the scale of change is significant. A society where 1 in 8 people are unwell at any given moment could reflect a real epidemiological change underway across India.

Hospitalisation at a private facility costs nearly 7 times what it costs at a government facility

The economics of getting sick in India in 2025 are complex and unequal. The survey’s expenditure tables expose the enormous gap between the cost of care at public versus private facilities, and how that gap reshapes healthcare decisions for millions of families.

The rural-urban split exposes a split story. In rural India, private care costs 6.8 times the government rate on average; steep, but relatively predictable. In urban India, the same ratio is 10.4 times. Expenditure at urban private health facilities costs dramatically more for the same conditions: a musculo-skeletal hospitalisation costs 13.7 times more at a private urban hospital than at a government one; psychiatric and neurological care runs 12.6 times more; a cardiovascular event, 9.5 times.

The urban gap is partly explained by the nature of urban private hospitals: more specialist care, longer stays, and higher room rates. But it also reflects a market with weaker price regulation and patients who have fewer government facility options nearby, or who perceive them as inadequate. For middle-class urban families without comprehensive corporate insurance, a cardiac event at a private hospital can mean bills of ₹1 lakh or more.

The median out-of-pocket hospitalisation spend across all hospitals is ₹11,285, meaning half of all cases cost ₹11,285 or less. In government hospitals alone, that median drops to ₹1,100. These numbers sound manageable until we compare them against the private hospital averages: for cardio-vascular care alone, urban private hospitals average ₹1,01,099 per case.

The average hospitalisation spend across rural and urban areas is ₹34,064, meaning a small number of catastrophically expensive cases drag the mean far above the median. Kidney failures, cancers and cardio-vascular disease are among the risks that push families into debt or asset sales.

India had more Hospital Beds Filled in 2014 than it does today, yet more people are sick

The headline hospitalisation rate for 2025, 27 cases per 1,000 people in rural India, 32 in urban areas, might look modest. But to understand what it means, you have to look at where India has been. The long-run hospitalisation data, tracked across five NSS rounds from 1995 to 2025, tells a more complicated story than any single year can.

India’s hospitalisation rate nearly tripled from 1995 to 2014, rising from 13 to 35 per 1,000 in rural areas and from 20 to 44 per 1,000 in urban areas. The 2014 peak is partly explained by better access to care, greater health awareness, and the expansion of government health schemes. Then it reversed sharply in 2017–18 and has not recovered to 2014 levels in either sector. By 2025, urban hospitalisation (32 per 1,000) is still 27% below its 2014 peak of 44.

This matters because more people are reporting sickness, but fewer are being hospitalised relative to the 2014 peak. One possible interpretation could be that improved outpatient care and preventive services are keeping people out of hospitals.

Approximately half of the persons are covered in some form of insurance

Perhaps the survey’s most interesting finding is the transformation in health insurance coverage. In 2017–18, only 14% of rural Indians and 19% of urban Indians had any form of health coverage. By 2025, those numbers stand at 47% and 44% respectively, a tripling in rural coverage in seven years.

Why does it matter?

India’s health system faces a compound challenge: a disease burden shifting from cheap-to-treat infections to expensive chronic conditions, a population ageing rapidly, and insurance coverage that is wide but not deep. The morbidity jump from 7.5% to 13.1% is not just a statistical figure, but a signal that the nation is undergoing a structural health transition faster than the system built to serve it can adapt. 

Key Numbers

• 13.1% of Indians reported illness in any 15-day period in 2025, up from 7.5% in 2017–18, nearly double in seven years

• 47% of rural India is now covered by health insurance, up from just 14% in 2017–18, largely through Ayushman Bharat and state schemes

• 96.2% institutional delivery rate across India, up from roughly 78% a decade ago and approaching universal coverage

• ₹34,064 average out-of-pocket expenditure per hospitalisation across all hospitals, a 70% jump from ₹20,135 in 2017–18