Significant progress made in health outcomes: Economic Survey

The Economic Survey 2021-22 tabled in Parliament on Monday underscored the importance of the Centre's emphasis on women in its social welfare programmes, and has credited its drive against malnourishment and improved access to healthcare facilities for the significant improvement recorded by the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5.

The survey noted that "India has made significant progress in improving its health outcomes over the last two decades by eliminating polio, guinea worm disease, yaws and maternal and neonatal tetanus", and has shown improvment in social indicators such as total fertility rate, sex ratio while health outcome indicators such as infant mortality rate, under-five mortality rate, institutional birth rates have improved over year 2015-16.

It also credited the increase in institutional deliveries and improvement in maternal health to better infrastructure and improved access to contraceptives.


The latest NFHS-5 shows that total fertility rate (TFR), an average number of children per woman, has come down to 2 in 2019-21 from 2.2 in 2015-16, while sex ratio, number of females per 1,000 males, in the total population has risen from 991 females in 2015-16 (NFHS-4) to 1,020 in 2019-21 (NFHS-5). In all states except Manipur, Meghalaya, Bihar, Jharkhand and UP, the replacement level of fertility has been achieved which is significant progress, the survey noted. "NFHS-5 also shows that not only services are reaching the public but the intended outcomes have also improved. All child nutrition indicators have also improved at an all India level," the survey pointed out.