Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are the top performers across population health indicators in Niti Aayog’s latest annual health index. Uttar Pradesh ranks in last.
The health index is a composite measure of states and union territories based on 23 health indicators with major weightage given to mortality rate, total fertility rate and sex ratio, among other parameters.
The second edition of the Aayog’s health index released on Tuesday. Haryana, Rajasthan and Jharkhand topped the list in incremental performance, while Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand are the worst performers.
Bihar ranks 20th out of 21 large states. With the latest encephalitis cases that have created havoc in Bihar and resulted in 132 deaths in Muzzafarpur alone, this unfortunately, is true.
The second edition of the Aayog’s report focuses on measuring the overall performance and incremental improvement in the states and union territories over a period of two-years, 2016-17 and 2017-18. It was prepared in collaboration with the health ministry and with technical assistance from the World Bank.
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According to the report, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have not shown any improvement.
“Idea is to improve health indicators in aspirational districts which will help us improve the overall national performance,” Niti Aayog’s vice chairman, Rajiv Kumar, said.
Among UTs, Delhi, Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep have not shown any improvement over the previous years. Puducherry has shown moderate improvement.
Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Chandigarh and Daman and Diu have also shown significant improvement.
The first edition of the health index, launched in February 2018, had ranked Kerala, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu as top performers in terms of overall historical category, while Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh were the top three ranking states in terms of annual incremental performance.