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Bhubaneswar, Feb 9: Orissa has been ranked 18th among 21 large states under overall performance in the Niti Aayog’s ‘performance in health outcome index’ released Friday. The report has noted that there is “a large gap in overall performance between the best and the least performing States and Union Territories”. It has also pointed out that all states and Union Territories have “substantial scope for improvement”.
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.
Kerala has been ranked the best among larger states in overall performance with a score of 80 in the reference year 2015-16. Uttar Pradesh ranked the lowest with 33.69. Punjab (with score of 65.21) and Tamil Nadu (with score of 63.38) ranked second and third in the ranking respectively, with the former pipping the latter to the second spot.
In the categorisation of larger states on incremental performance and overall performance, Orissa has been placed in the category of least improved, along with Madhya Pradesh and Assam, in terms of incremental performance, and among aspirants in terms of overall performance.
“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,” the report stated and added that while states that start at lower levels of development are generally at an advantage in notching up incremental progress over states with high health index scores, it is a challenge for states with high index scores to even maintain their performance levels.
According to the index, incremental measurement has shown that nearly a third of the states have registered a decline in their health indices in the reference year compared with the base year.
The silver lining for the state in the report is that the state has done well in terms of key inputs or processes.
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. 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.
State health and family welfare minister Pratap Jena, however, said he was unaware of the report and also that he did not know what parameters were taken into account while ranking the states. “I have not gone through the report. Let me first go through it, and then I will comment,” he said.
