Uttar Pradesh ranks at the bottom of Niti Aayog's Health Index, Kerala tops the chart

As per the report released on Monday, the southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana emerged as the best three performers among the larger states.

Niti Aayog in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and the World Bank comes up with the Health Index to track progress on health outcomes of states and Union Territories (UTs).

"Uttar Pradesh with the lowest Overall Reference Year (2019-20) Index Score ranked at the bottom (Rank 19) in Overall Performance, however, it ranked at the top in terms of Incremental Performance by registering the highest incremental change from the Base Year (2018-19) to Reference Year (2019-20)," the report said.

Telangana performed well both in terms of overall performance as well as incremental performance and secured the third position in both instances.

For the fourth consecutive round Kerala emerged as the best performer in terms of overall performance.

Among the smaller states, Mizoram emerged as the best performer in overall performance as well as incremental performance.

Among UTs, Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir ranked among the bottom UTs in terms of overall performance but emerged as the leading performer in terms of incremental performance.

Among the 19 larger states, four improved their rankings while five states deteriorated in their rankings from Base Year (2018-19) to Reference Year (2019-20), and 10 states retained their Base Year (2018-19) ranks.

"The gap in the Overall Performance between the best and the worst performing Larger State and UTs narrowed in the current round of the Health Index, while it increased for the Smaller States," Niti Ayog report said.

"Nearly half the states and UTs did not reach the half way mark in the Composite Overall Index Score, and despite good performance, even the top ranking states and UTs could benefit from further improvements." it noted.

States such as Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Telangana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar reported positive incremental performance.

As per the health Index, Mizoram and Telangana were the only two states that demonstrated strong overall performance and showed most improvements in the incremental performance between the Base Year (2018-19) and Reference Year (2019-20).

"Among the Larger States, Telangana, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh showed strong Overall Performance and also registered improvements in Incremental Performance," the report said.

The Niti Aayog said that Health Index has strengthened the culture of use of data at the state/UT level to monitor performance and is contributing to the agenda of improving availability, quality and timeliness of data.

"The Health Index is a useful tool to measure and compare the Overall Performance and Incremental Performance across states and UTs over time and nudging the states and UTs to shift the focus from inputs and outputs to outcomes," it concluded.

Health Index comprises select indicators in three domains -- health outcomes, governance and information and key inputs and processes.