Meghalaya and Mizoram show maximum annual incremental progress in health sector: Niti Aayog
The report, titled “Healthy States, Progressive India”, ranks states and Union Territories on their year-on-year incremental performance in health outcomes as well as their overall status.
NEW DELHI:
Meghalaya and Mizoram registered the maximum annual incremental progress in health sector among ‘Smaller States’, said State Health Index report for 2019–20, released by Niti Aayog on December 27.
The State Health Index report further revealed that Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana are the top three ranking states under the Larger States category.
‘States are beginning to take cognizance of indices such as the State Health Index and use them in their policymaking and resource allocation. This report is an example of both competitive and cooperative federalism,’ said Niti Aayog vice chairman Dr Rajiv Kumar.
The report, titled “Healthy States, Progressive India”, ranks states and Union Territories on their year-on-year incremental performance in health outcomes as well as their overall status.
The State Health Index is annual tool to assess the performance of states and UTs. It is a weighted composite index based on 24 indicators grouped under the domains of ‘Health Outcomes’, ‘Governance and Information’, and ‘Key Inputs/Processes’. Each domain has been assigned weights based on its importance with higher score for outcome indicators.
‘Our objective through this index is to not just look at the states’ historical performance but also their incremental performance. The index encourages healthy competition and cross-learning among States and UTs,’ said Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.
The index is being compiled and published since 2017. The reports aim to nudge states/UTs towards building robust health systems and improving service delivery.
The Health Index Score for the Reference Year (2019-20) revealed wide disparities in Overall Performance across the Larger States. Among the 19 Larger States, the Overall Performance Score of the best-performing state was about 2.7 times of the least-performing state. Kerala continued to champion the Larger States with an Overall Performance Score of 82.20, while Uttar Pradesh was the least performing state with an Overall Performance Score of 30.57.
Compared to the Base Year (2018-19), the gap between the best performing Larger State and the least performing Larger State has narrowed down in the Reference Year (2019-20).
Despite good performance, even the best performing states have significant room for improvement as the highest observed Overall Index Score was 82.20 for Kerala which is some distance from the frontier (maximum potential score is 100).
The lowest Index Score is 30.57 for Uttar Pradesh preceded by Bihar (31.00), Madhya Pradesh (36.72) and Rajasthan (41.33). This clearly indicates that there is a scope for improvement for all Larger States, including the best performing states, to reach the potential score of 100.
Fifty percent of the Larger States did not even reach the halfway mark in terms of the Composite Index Score for Overall Performance and there is an urgent need to accelerate efforts to narrow the performance gap between the states, the State Health Index report said.
TNT-The Northeast Today is now on WhatsApp: CLICK HERE to receive more updates on your phone.
ALSO READ: Centre works as facilitator in resolving border dispute: MHA
