Why is it in the news?
- The NITI Aayog has released the second edition of its State Health Index 2019 in a report titled “Healthy States, Progressive India: Report on Rank of States and UTs”
About
- The report has been prepared by NITI Aayog in collaboration with the health ministry and with technical assistance from the World Bank
- The index analyses overall performance and incremental improvement in the States and the Union Territories for the period with 2015-16 as the base year and 2017-18 as the reference year.
- It takes into account 23 health indicators such as neonatal mortality rate, under-five mortality rate, proportion of low birth weight among new-borns, proportion of districts with functional Cardiac Care Units, full immunisation coverage etc.
- The report ranked states and UTs in three categories — larger States, smaller States and Union Territories to ensure comparison among similar entities.
Highlights
- Kerala has been designated for the best performing State in the health sector among the 21 large States.
- The position of the second-best State has been taken by Andhra Pradesh, and the third by Maharashtra. Haryana, Rajasthan and Jharkhand improved the most.
- Among the large states, Uttar Pradesh was the worst performing state. Other poor performing states were Bihar, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh.
- Among the smaller states, Mizoram ranked first in overall performance. Tripura and Manipur improved the most.
- Among the UTs, Chandigarh ranked first in overall performance, while Dadra and Nagar Haveli improved the most.
- The report has also observed that there was a general positive correlation between the Health Index scores and the economic development levels of States and UTs as measured by per capita Net State Domestic Product (NSDP).
- However, a few States with relative low level of economic development performed well in the Health Index, such as Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Mizoram, Andhra Pradesh, and Punjab.
