BHUBANESWAR: Even as the institutional delivery rate has increased substantially and infant mortality rate has declined considerably in the State, quality of delivery at the health facilities needs to be improved, said experts involved with National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
Talking to mediapersons, Prof SK Singh of International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) said Odisha has significantly improved in institutional delivery in NFHS-4, but it is not going to solve the purpose if the State is not focusing on quality.
The Odisha report of NFHS-4 was released by Health Secretary Dr Pramod Kumar Meherda at a seminar organised by Mumbai-based IIPS here on Tuesday. The NFHS statistics show, of five live births four take place in a health facility in Odisha as institutional delivery rate has increased from 35.6 per cent to 85.4 per cent in the last one decade and is better than the national average of 78.9 per cent. Moreover, 75.9 per cent institutional deliveries have been conducted in public health facilities.
“Bringing any health indicator from higher level to lower level may be an easy task, but from lower level to further lower is difficult for which only vertical intervention can not work. The State has to adopt innovative strategies to achieve success,” Singh said.
The findings in many critical health indicators are very encouraging, especially in areas of institutional delivery, fertility, family planning, women and child health, nutrition, immunisation, antenatal and postnatal care, reduction in IMR and Under-5 mortality rate. But child anaemia is still high as half of the children in Odisha are anaemic.
“One in every two children are suffering from anaemia as nearly 45 pc children in Odisha are anaemic. Though malnutrition has declined, there is a potential to further enhance the rate,” the survey coordinator said.
The statistics show smaller families are becoming the norm. At current fertility levels, Dr Manas Ranjan Pradhan said, fertility has declined by 0.3 children in the last 10 years. Most States including Odisha have reached replacement level fertility (just over two children per woman). The total fertility rate in Odisha is 2.1 children per woman, he said.
Releasing the report, Dr Meherda said various initiatives taken in the last one decade have proved to be on right path. “We would scale it up further and ensure that the measures bring further improvement which would be reflected in the next round of NFHS,” he said.
Among others, RMRC Director Sanghamitra Pati, IIPS coordinators Dr Laxmikanta Dwivedi, Dr Sarang Pedgaonkar and Vaidehi Yelamanchali also spoke.