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NITI Aayog’s Health Index: Kerala Tops, Big Challenge for Uttar Pradesh

Does Yogi still stick to that piece of advice for Kerala government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the wake of the NITI Aayog report?
punalur hospital

State run Punalur hospital in Kerala. Image Courtesy: Hindustan Times

Kerala bagged the top position in the health index report “Healthy States, Progressive India” prepared by NITI Aayog, while Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh ranked at the bottom among 21 large states on health indicators. 

The setback for Adityanath comes after the state had seen deaths of more than 70 children at Gorakhpur Medical College last year. Apart from this, recently more than 40 people were infected with HIV in Unnao district of the state due to the use of the same syringe. Such kind of negligence from the side of UP government and authorities were continuously making headlines in the recent past.  

Amidst all this mess, Yogi Adityanath “advised” the Kerala government that “the state government should learn from UP how to run hospitals”, during his political campaigning in the state in October last year. 

Does Yogi still stick to that piece of advice for Kerala government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the wake of the NITI Aayog report?

Kerala, the state which maintained the top position, has already achieved high standards including very low levels of neonatal mortality, under-five mortality, and replacement fertility, has very little space for further improvement. Though UP find its place in the last row of the ranking list, there is little relief for the state.  The state ranked third behind Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir in terms of annual incremental performance. However, despite improving its overall score on the index, Uttar Pradesh could not improve its ranking and was placed at the bottom below Bihar and Rajasthan.

"Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir and UP showed the maximum gains in improvement of health outcomes from base (2014-15) to reference year (2015-16) in indicators such as neonatal mortality rate, under-five mortality rate, full immunization coverage, institutional deliveries, and People Living with HIV (PLHIV) on anti-retroviral therapy," said the report released on Friday.  

In overall rankings among the larger states, Punjab jumped three places to knock off Tamil Nadu from the second place. Both Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand jumped four places to be placed at 7th and 14th places respectively.

Among the smaller states, Mizoram ranked first followed by Manipur on overall performance. In terms of annual incremental performance, Manipur came out on top followed by Goa. 

Among the union territories, Lakshadweep showed both the best overall performance, as well as the highest annual incremental performance.

While releasing the report, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said it would serve as a tool to leverage co-operative and competitive federalism to accelerate the pace of achieving health outcomes.

It would also serve as an instrument for "nudging" states and union territories to put a much greater focus on output and outcome-based measurement of annual performance, he said.

Kant added that the next such report on the states' performance will be released in June.

He added that NITI Aayog would also bring out a ranking of 730 district hospitals based on their performance.

"The intention is to give incentives to good performers while shaming those who do not improve by naming them and putting out their details in public domain," he said.

The health ranking of states has been done in three categories namely larger states, smaller states and union territories to ensure comparison among similar entities.

The NITI Aayog said it is a weighted composite index based on indicators in three domains: health outcomes (70 percent weightage), governance and information (12 percent), and key inputs and processes (18 percent).

According to the report, the incremental measurement reveals that about one-third of the states have registered a decline in their performance in 2016 as compared to 2015, stressing the need to pursue domain-specific, targeted interventions.

(Inputs from IANS)

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