Even as India is struggling hard to meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) including maternal and infant mortality rate, the Finance Ministry's bid to cut more than `6,000 crore in the Health Ministry's budget of around `31,000 crore is likely to have an adverse impact on its efforts to ensure basic health facilities to the needy. However, what is concerning for health experts is that India's public spending on health is already among the lowest in the world. India spends only about 1 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on public health, compared to 3 per cent in China and 8.3 per cent in the United States. A senior Health Ministry official said that the Revised Estimate for the Ministry is now over `24,000 crore as the Finance Ministry has slashed more than `6,000 crore from the budget estimate of nearly `31,000 crores for 2014-15. He said various programmes like those for elderly care, Vector Borne Disease Control , pilot Programme on Prevention and Control of, diabetes, CVD and Stroke, National Program on Prevention & Control of Deafness and National Mental Health and among few others have witnessed a cut in their financial allocations. The official also said that budget cut means low fund which would in-turn mean low investments by the States-health being a State subject-as health is not a priority area for majority of them. “This would adversely impact our targets for MDG goals to be attained by 2015. The expenditure under the National Health Mission is already MDG Goal 4 pertains to reduction of child mortality, for India it is 42 per thousand live births and IMR goal is 28 per thousand live births. MDG 5 target is to reduce maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015. This translates to reducing the MMR from 560 in 1990 to 140 in 2015. India's MMR is likely to reach 141 if current rate of annual decline continues, said the official. However, budget cut may cut down spending in these programmes also, he added. Other health indicators are also not encouraging. More than 30-35 per cent of global heart diseases are in India and in all other diseases its share is more than 25 per cent. There are more than ten lakh cancer patients in India.