New Delhi: : Even though its overall score has been slightly improved in one year, Odisha’s All India ranking on Annual Health Index among all big States has been came down by two positions.
As per an Annual Health Index report published by National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) on Monday, Odisha’s overall performance ranking has came down to 14 in 2019-20 from 12 reported in the base year 2018-19.
The State has scored 44.31 points in 2019-20 compared to 44.18 points in the base year. However, the overall rank slipped down as other major States have performed well in the health indicators, sources said.
NITI Aayog today released the fourth edition of the State Health Index for 2019–20. The report, titled “Healthy States, Progressive India”, ranks States and Union Territories (UTs) on their year-on-year incremental performance in health outcomes as well as their overall status.
The report was released jointly by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar, CEO Amitabh Kant, Additional Secretary Rakesh Sarwal, and World Bank Senior Health Specialist Sheena Chhabra. The report has been developed by NITI Aayog, with technical assistance from the World Bank, and in close consultation with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
The reports says that Odisha’s performance in few health indicators including Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR), Under-five Mortality Rate and MMR has been slightly improved, but not upto the mark in comparison to other big States.
State’s NMR has been declined by from 32 to 31 while Under-five Mortality Rate has been reduced slightly from 47 to 44 and MMR has been improved from 168 to 150, in the said one year.
However, he performance in other indicators like Sex Ratio at Birth, Full immunisation coverage, TB control programme etc is not satisfactory.
Odisha’ Sex Ratio at Birth has been come down from 938 to 933 while the full immunization coverage has gone down to 85.61 per cent from 88.40 per cent. Similarly, the total number of notified TB cases in the State slipped to 64.59 per cent from 67.65 per cent.
Odisha ranked 7th number among big States on performance in the Governance and Information. Witnessing an improvement of 4.50 percentage points, Odisha scored 65.96 points.
Health Index is a weighted composite score incorporating 24 indicators covering key aspects of health performance. Health Index comprises select indicators in three domains: (a) Health Outcomes; (b) Governance and Information; and (c) Key Inputs and Processes.
The objective of the Annual Health Index is to track progress on health outcomes and health systems performance, develop healthy competition and encourage cross learning among states and UTs.
Health Index Scores and rankings for States and UTs are generated to assess Incremental Performance (year-to-year progress) and Overall Performance (current performance).
It is expected that the exercise will help drive state/UT’s efforts towards achievement of health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including those related to Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and other health outcomes.