Kerala best State on health parameters, UP at the bottom

NEW DELHI: For the fourth consecutive round, Kerala has topped a ranking of States on overall health indicators; Uttar Pradesh has come in at the bottom. The ‘Health Index’ is part of a report commissioned by the NITI Aayog, World Bank and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana emerged among the best three performers in terms of overall performance according to the Niti Aayog’s health index while Uttar Pradesh topped the table on incremental performance despite being at the bottom. Among the smaller states, Mizoram emerged as the best performer in overall performance as well as incremental outcome. Among Union territories (UTs), Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir ranked at the bottom in terms of overall performance but emerged as the leading performer in terms of incremental performance.
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. And 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.
Several States are significantly better in one domain suggesting that there was scope to improve their performance in the other domains with specific targeted interventions. For instance, 47% of States showed the highest performance in health outcomes and governance and information domains and only one State showed the highest performance in the key inputs and processes domain. The better performing States such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra performed comparatively better on the health outcomes domain, but performed badly on key inputs and processes, the report notes.
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. Telangana improved its position from fourth to third, Gujarat from seventh to sixth, and Punjab from ninth to eighth. The most significant progress was observed in Assam as it improved its ranking by three positions, from 15 to 12.
However, five States recorded a decline in their ranking . Odisha had the steepest decline of two positions, while the ranking of Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttarakhand declined by one position each.