As the National Family Health Mission’s fifth series had highlighted the worsening state of J&K’s health and nutritional indicators, a newly unveiled report by NITI Aayog has revealed that the erstwhile state’s Annual Health Index, which assesses the incremental performance of health system in India, has boosted by more than nine percent in the erstwhile state.The positive figures were placed by government think tank NITI Aayog on Monday when it released the fourth edition of its health index. The report, “HEALTHY STATES PROGRESSIVE INDIA Report on the Ranks of States and Union Territories” has revealed that J&K’s Health Index Score had improved by 9.55 percent which is the fourth highest positive increment all over India.The report was divided into three different parts—larger states, smaller states and union territories. As per the report, the erstwhile state of J&K is the fourth best in terms of Health index after Mizoram (18.45 percent), Meghalaya(17.70 percent) and Delhi (9.68 percent).Pertinently, the report was prepared by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in collaboration with NFHS and the World Bank that has provided technical assistance. The Health Index Round IV 2019-20 has been reported without the impact of COVID-19 on health outcomes or any of the other indicators as the Index Performance relates to Base Year (2018-19) and Reference Year (2019-20), largely the pre-COVID-19 period.As per the report, the “Overall Reference Year Index Score” for J&K was recorded at 47 percent with an incremental increase of 9.55 percent and an incremental rank of second.“J&K was ranked fifth in terms of the states/UTs whose overall performance in terms of Health index was recorded in the most improved category.” The report reads.In terms of the overall performance without the positive incremental score, J&K has the worst performance in the seven Union Territories. “J&K was ranked sixth with a percentage of 47 percent in all the UTs of India in the overall performance for Health index for 2019-20session.” The report further reads.As per the report, J&K has ranked fifth among UTs in terms of performance in Governance and Information Domain in 2019-20 Index Scores with a percentage of 20.84 with a 10.04 percent of incremental rise from 2018-19.As per NITI Aayog the recent report 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 pertinent to mention here that the report has also compiled the data on Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR), Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR), Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB) and Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) all over India.Notably, the NITI Aayog report is an initiative by the Government of India under the GOI Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-5.
