New Delhi: Kerala has once again topped the NITI Aayog’s Healthy States Ranking. The “Healthy States, Progressive India” report was released by NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Dr Rajiv Kumar on Tuesday. The second edition of the report focuses on measuring and highlighting the overall performance and incremental improvement of the states over a two-year period (2016-17 and 2017-18) after taking into consideration the health outcomes, governance and processes and impact of policy interventions.
While Haryana, Jharkhand and Assam have emerged as the states which have improved the most Chhatisgarh is the state with least improvement. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh stand last in the list.
The report has been prepared in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and with technical assistance from the World Bank.
The first round of the Health Index (referred to as 2017 Health Index) was released in February 2018 which measured the annual and incremental performance of the States and UTs over the period of 2014-15 (base year) to 2015-16 (reference year).
In the previous report, Kerala, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu had ranked on top in terms of overall performance among bigger states, while Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh were the top three ranking States in terms of annual incremental performance. Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh had also shown the maximum gains in improvement of health outcomes from base to reference year in indicators such as Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR), Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR), full immunization coverage, institutional deliveries, and People Living with HIV (PLHIV) on Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART).
