Kerala tops Niti’s 2nd Health Index, Uttar Pradesh worst performer

Kerala has occupied the top slot in terms of health performance among large states followed by Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, whereas Uttar Pradesh and Bihar remained at the bottom, according to the Niti Aayog’s second round of Health Index.

The ranking was done under three categories — largerstates, smaller states and Union territories (UTs) — to ensure comparisonamong similar entities.

   

Gujarat, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh stood at fourth, fifthand sixth spots, according to the report, titled ‘Healthy States, ProgressiveIndia: Report on Rank of States and UTs’.

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha were among theworst-performing states on the index.

In terms of annual incremental performance among the largerstates, Haryana, Rajasthan and Jharkhand are the top-three states.

The second round of the Health Index took into account theperiod 2015-16 (base year) to 2017-18 (reference year).

The Index is a composite score incorporating 23 indicatorscovering key aspects of health sector performance with major weightage to theoutcomes.

Among the smaller states, Mizoram ranked first in overallperformance, while Tripura and Manipur were the top-two states in terms ofincremental performance. Sikkim and Arunchal Pradesh had the biggest decrease inoverall Health Index scores.

Among the UTs, Chandigarh ranked first in overallperformance, while Dadra and Nagar Haveli improved the most.

Releasing the report, Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumarsaid the Aayog is committed to establishing the Health Index as an annualsystematic tool to propel states towards undertaking multi-prongedinterventions to bring better health outcomes. Niti Aayog member Vinod KumarPaul said the Union government should spend 2.5 per cent of gross domesticproduct on health.

“And state governments should increase their spendingon health from an average of 4.7 per cent to 8 per cent of their budget (netstate domestic product) on health,” Paul said.

According to the report, the decline in the overall HealthIndex score of five empowered action group states (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh,Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha) between the base year and the referenceyear is attributed to the deterioration of performances of several indicators.”For instance, in Bihar, the deteriorationbetween the base year and the reference year was primarily due to theperformance related to total fertility rate, low birth weight, sex ratio atbirth, TB (tuberculosis) treatment success rate, quality accreditation ofpublic health facilities, time taken for NHM (National Health Mission) fundtransfer,” it said.

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