Picture used for representational purpose only

DEHRADUN: Falling two slots from last year’s 15th rank, Uttarakhand this year was relegated to the 17th position among 21 states of the country in the healthcare rankings recently released by central government think tank Niti Aayog in its report titled ‘Healthy States Progressive India: Report on Rank of States and UTs’.

The hill state has performed badly in all the three domains — sex ratio, infant mortality rate (IMR) and neonatal mortality rate (NMR).

The health index incorporates 23 indicators covering key aspects of the health sector's performance. These indicators were then grouped into three domains of 'health outcomes', governance' and 'information and key inputs.'

The Himalayan state scored a dismal 40.22 in the index in the reference year (2017-18) compared to 45.22 in the base year (2015-16). The negative incremental change led to the state being ranked 19th in terms of improving its performance.

The report revealed that Uttarakhand has been one of the worst performers on almost all the 23 indicators used to prepare the index. While it ranked 14th in under-five mortality rate, 19th in sex ratio and 18th in number of institutional deliveries, it was the only state where neonatal mortality rate (number of deaths per thousand deliveries within 28 days of birth) has registered an increase.

“From the period 2015 to 2016, NMR declined in all larger states except for Uttarakhand where NMR increased from 28 to 32 neonatal deaths per 1000 live births,” read the report. Uttarakhand was placed 18th in this category.

The reason for the worrying indicators can be attributed to the gloomy picture painted by the report about the state’s health infrastructure . The report said that 70% of the state’s primary health centres (PHCs) had no medical officers (worst among all big states) while 68% of the district hospitals did not have specialists (second- worst). Meanwhile, it took the government treasury over 109 days to transfer the funds under the National Health Mission to the implementing agency. It was ranked the 15th worst-state in this category.

Government officials, however, said that the report has taken into account "old data" and that the state has taken significant steps to improve on many of the indicators. “We have had significant progress on many of the indicators. While improving mortality rates take time, improvement in infrastructure is already visible,” said Yugal Kishore, mission director of National Health Mission.

Pant added that most of the state’s PHCs now have doctors while its performance at NMR reduction has also been "very good." “We have hired over 2,000 doctors and almost every PHC now has a doctor. Also, we have been one of the best states when it came to improving the sex ratio, NMR as well as IMR,” he said.

