National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) has painted a bleak picture after the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) dropped further from 2.2 to 2.0 at the national level
The main objective of successive rounds of the NFHS has been to provide reliable and comparable data relating to health and family welfare and other emerging areas in India. The NFHS-5 National Report lists progress from NFHS-4 (2015-16) to NFHS-5 (2019-21).
The other key highlights of the survey include institutional births that have increased from 79% to 89% in India.
NFHS-5 has revealed more than three-fourths (77%) of children aged 12-23 months were fully immunized, compared with 62% in NFHS-4. The level of stunting among children under five years has marginally declined from 38% to 36% in the country in the last four years. Stunting is higher among children in rural areas (37%) than in urban areas (30%) in 2019-21.
NFHS-5 shows an overall improvement in Sustainable Development Goals indicators in all States/Union Territories (UTs). The extent to which married women usually participate in three household decisions indicates that their participation in decision-making is high, ranging from 80% in Ladakh to 99% in Nagaland and Mizoram. Rural (77%) and urban (81%) differences are found to be marginal. The prevalence of women having bank or savings accounts that they use has increased from 53% to 79% in the last four years.
Compared with NFHS-4, the prevalence of overweight or obesity has increased in most States/UTs in NFHS-5. At the national level, it increased from 21% to 24% among women and 19% to 23% among men. More than a third of women in Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Sikkim, Manipur, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Punjab, Chandigarh, and Lakshadweep (34-46 %) are overweight or obese.
The NFHS-5 survey work has been conducted in around 6.37 lakh sample households from 707 districts (as of March 2017) of the country from 28 States and eight UTs, covering 7,24,115 women and 1,01,839 men to provide dis-aggregated estimates up to district level.
The national report also provides data on socio-economic and other background characteristics; useful for policy formulation and effective program implementation.
“NFHS-5 provides information on important indicators which help track the progress of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the country. NFHS-4 (2015-16) estimates were used as baseline values for a large number of SDG indicators and NFHS- 5 will provide data for around 34 SDG indicators at various levels,’’ said the release.
