BENGALURU: Karnataka has been in war mode trying to step up health infrastructure in the state, but NITI Aayog’s Health Index rankings released on Monday show that the state has slipped from 16th position in 2018-19 to 19th this year in the incremental index and has gone down from the 8th position to 9th in the overall index. Of all southern states, Karnataka has shown the sharpest decline. The state’s overall score on various parameters slipped from 59.29 to 57.93.
NITI Aayog has categorised Karnataka among 19 large states. The states are ranked on parameters including neonatal mortality rate (NMR), under-five mortality rate (U5MR) and full-immunisation coverage. The learnings from the previous three rounds of the Health Index were taken into account to develop the Health Index Round IV 2019-20. Previous indicators were reviewed and three new ones were added for larger states. These are Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR), the proportion of pregnant women who received four or more antenatal care checkups (ANC) and level of registration of deaths.
The report stated that Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana are among one-third of the larger states in terms of overall performance indicating better health systems, but have a negative incremental performance from the base year (2018-19) to reference year (2019-20) Karnataka has been classified in the ‘Achievers’ category overall, but in the incremental performance, it has been marked ‘Not Improved’.
There are some disturbing trends, like deterioration in vital parameters such as sex ratio at birth, full-immunisation coverage, antenatal care within the first trimester, proportion of pregnant women who received four or more antenatal care checkups and also the proportion of institutional deliveries.
Steady decline in sex ratio at birth in the state, says report
Karnataka has improved in total case notification rate of tuberculosis (TB) and modern contraceptive prevalence rate. There has been a steady decline in the sex ratio at birth in the state with the number of girls to 1,000 boys dropping from 939 in 2015-16 to 935 in 2017-18 and 929 in 2018-19 to 924 in 2019-20. There has been a deterioration of -5 when compared to the base year, the report stated.
NITI Aayog noted that incremental changes in Health Index scores from 2018-19 to 2019-20 varied significantly across larger states with the vast majority recording improved performance. The largest increase in index scores (5.52 points) was recorded by Uttar Pradesh, while the largest decline was observed in Karnataka (-1.37 points).
“Apart from Karnataka, all southern states showed improvement in the Composite Index Scores between the base year (2018-19) and the reference year (2019-20),” it noted. NITI Aayog appreciated the state for monitoring at the highest level of government using the Health Index report. It said Karnataka has replicated the Index and because of this, the availability, quality and timeliness of data have improved.