National Family Health Survey-5

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In news–Recently, the Union Ministry of Health and FamilyWelfare released the findings of NFHS- 5 phase II.

About NFHS-5

The NFHS provides estimates on key indicators related to population, family planning, child and maternal health, nutrition, adult health, and domestic violence, among others.
NFHS-5 was conducted in two phases between 2019 and 2021, and covered 650,000 households from 707 districts of the country.
The States and UTs which were surveyed in the Phase-II are Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, NCT of Delhi, Odisha, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh andUttarakhand.
The main objective of successive rounds of the NFHS is to provide reliable and comparable data relating to health and family welfare and other emerging issues.
International Institute for Population Sciences(IIPS), Mumbai is the nodal agency, responsible for providing coordination and technical guidance for the survey.
The funding for different rounds of NFHS has been provided by USAID, DFID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, UNFPA, and MOHFW, GOI.
The all-India and State/UT level factsheet of NFHS-5 released includes information on 131 key indicators.
It provides information on important indicators which are helpful in tracking the progress of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the country.
Many indicators of NFHS-5 are similar to NFHS-4carried out in 2015-16 to make possible comparisons over time.
However, NFHS-5 includes some new focal areas, such as death registration, pre-school education,expanded domains of child immunization, components of micro-nutrients to children, menstrual hygiene, frequency of alcohol and tobacco use, additional components of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), expanded age ranges for measuring hypertension and diabetes among all aged 15 years and above.
The first four editions of surveys were conducted in 1992-93, 1998-99, 2005-06 and 2015-16.
The findings of NFHS-5 in respect of 22 States & UTs covered in Phase-I were released in December, 2020.
A comparison of NFHS-5 with NFHS-4 (2015-16) reveals improvement in several dimensions such as educational attainment, institutional deliveries, vaccinations, infant mortality and much more.

Key findings of NFHS-5-

The key results from India and Phase-II States/UTs NFHS-5 Factsheets areas below:

The Total Fertility Rates (TFR), an average number of children per woman has further declined from 2.2 to 2.0 at the national level and all 14 States/UT’s ranging from 1.4 in Chandigarh to 2.4 in Uttar Pradesh.
All Phase-II States have achieved replacement level of fertility (2.1) except Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.
Overall Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) has increased substantially from 54% to 67% at all-India level and in almost all Phase-II States/UTswith an exception of Punjab. Use of modern methods of contraceptives has also increased in almost all States/UTs.
Unmet needs of family Planning have witnessed a significant decline from13 per cent to 9 per cent at all-India level and in most of the Phase-II States/UTs.
The unmet need for spacing has come down to less than 10 per cent in all the States except Jharkhand (12%), Arunachal Pradesh (13%) and Uttar Pradesh(13%).
Full immunization drive among children aged 12-23 months has recorded substantial improvement from 62 per cent to 76 per cent at all-India level. 11out of 14 States/UTs have more than three-fourth of children aged 12-23 months with fully immunization and it is highest (90%) for Odisha.
On comparing NFHS-4 and NFHS-5 data, the increase in full immunization coverage is observed to be expeditious in many states and UTs; More than 50 per cent of Phase-II States/ UTs are sharing over 10 percentage points during the short span of 4 years.
This can be attributed to the flagship initiative of Mission Indradhanush launched by the government since 2015.
There is an increase from 51 per cent to 58 percent of women receiving the recommended four or more ANC visits by health providers at all-India level.
Also, all the Phase-II States/UTs have shown improvement except Punjab between 2015-16 to 2019-20.
Institutional births have increased substantially from 79 per cent to 89 percent at all-India Level. Institutional delivery is 100 percent in Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.
There has also been a substantial increase in C-section deliveries in many States/UTs especially inprivate health facilities.
Child Nutrition indicators show a slight improvement at all-India level as Stunting has declined from 38 per cent to 36 per cent, wasting from 21 per cent to 19 per cent and underweight from 36 per cent to 32 percent at allIndia level.
In all phase-II States/UTs the situation has improved in respect of child nutrition but the change is not significant as drastic changes in respect of these indicators are unlikely in a short span period.
More than half of the children and women (including pregnant women) are anemic in all the phase-II States/UTs and all-India level compared to NFHS4, in spite of substantial increase in the composition of iron folic acid (IFA)tablets by pregnant women for 180 days or more.
Exclusive breastfeeding to children under age 6 months has shown an improvement in all-India level from 55 percent in 2015-16 to 64 percent in 2019-21. All the phase-II States/UTs have also showed considerable progress.
India now has 1,020 women for every 1000 men. According to NFHS-3, conducted in 2005-06, the ratio was equal, 1000: 1000; it went down to 991:1000 in 2015-16 in NFHS-4. This is the first time, in any NFHS or Census, that the sex ratio is skewed in favour of women.
Women’s empowerment indicators portray considerable improvement at all India level and across all the phase-II States/UTs.
Significant progress has been recorded between NFHS-4 and NFHS-5 in regard to women operating bank accounts from 53 percent to 79 percent at all-India level.
For instance,in the case of Madhya Pradesh the increase was to the tune of 37 percentage point from 37 per cent to 75 per cent.