Context
Recently, the government think-tank, NITI Aayog, has issued a health index of States and Union Territories taking 2019-2020 as the reference year.
- The report has been prepared by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in collaboration with the World Bank.
Key-highlights
- The health index incorporates 24 indicators covering key aspects of health performance.
- The NITI Aayog Health Index comprises indicators in three domains-- health outcomes, governance and information, and key inputs and processes.
- Each domain is assigned weights based on its importance with the health outcomes carrying the highest weight.
- Ten States including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh retained their rank while four States improved their rankings from the base year-to-reference year.
Range of indicators
- Health outcomes, for instance, includes parameters such as neonatal mortality rate, under-5 mortality rate, sex ratio at birth.
- Governance includes parameters such as institutional deliveries, average occupancy of senior officers in key posts earmarked for health.
- The ‘key inputs’ domain consists of proportion of shortfall in health care providers to what is recommended, functional medical facilities, birth and death registration and tuberculosis treatment success rate.
States Performance report
- Larger States: Among larger states, Kerala has emerged as the top performer while Uttar Pradesh is the worst performer in overall performance.
- According to the report Tamil Nadu and Telangana have emerged as the second and third best performers, respectively, on health parameters.
- However, the report added that Uttar Pradesh topped in terms of incremental performance while Karnataka is the worst performer.
- Smaller States: Mizoram emerged as the best performer in overall performance while Nagaland is the worst performer among the smaller states.
- Mizoram topped incremental performance while Goa is the worst performer.
- Union Territories: Chandigarh emerged as the best performer among Union Territories while Puducherry is the worst performer in overall performance.
- Delhi topped incremental performance while Chandigarh is the worst performer.
