BENGALURU: There has been prolonged delay in the release of the National Family Health Survey-6 (NFHS-6) report. But now to make up for the lost time and to help the state governments undertake various health and family planning schemes, the International Institute of Public Health (IIPH) in Mumbai will soon release the indicators and fact sheets of the report.
Officials in the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), who were part of the team on preparing the NFHS-6, said the Union government has delayed the release of the report. But now the release of the indicators and district-wise factsheet by the IIPH will help state governments and panchayats undertake proper planning.
Professor and Head of Population Research, IIPH, CM Lakshmana, said people will also be able to access the fact sheets and data once it’s made public in a month’s time and they will be able to give their inputs on various issues including maternal and child health, death, family planning, measures the government is taking and what needs to be improved upon.
The release of district-wise data will also be an indicator of the works the governments have been doing over the years and what needs to be done in future. It will help in drawing the government’s attention on introducing and strengthening certain schemes.
“The NFHS-6 was completed two years back and was to be released a year back. It is now August 2025 and work on the creation of the NFHS-7 is to start in 2027 as per schedule. In the absences of the release of the final NFHS-6 report, its factsheets and data reports will be used as the base line for the NFHS-7 survey.
Presently, the NFHS exercise is done once every five years. But now we are asking the Central government to do this once in tree years as the population dynamics is rapidly changing. Further, there is also a need to create a separate cell for this exercise as it is time consuming and requires a lot of proficiency,” sources in IIPH said.