NITI Aayog has just published the Health Index report titled ‘Healthy States, Progressive India: Report on Rank of States and UTs’ where all states and UTs have been allotted ranks in terms of overall health performance during last two years. But sadly, there is nothing in the report to bring cheer for Arunchal Pradesh since the state has performed poorly with a big decrease in overall Health Index scores. Coincidentally, the report has come at a time when there are hectic preparations for the forthcoming annual state budget for 2019-20. And with the report further validating that health sector of the state is not in a desirably healthy state and there is need for taking some major actions, it will now be interesting to see how the future course of actions are chalked out to address this failure, with the state budget perhaps going to be an immediate indicator.
The report, also referred to as Health Index-2018 has been prepared in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with technical assistance from World Bank and is an assessment of overall performance and incremental improvement during the immediate preceding two-year period with 2015-16 as Base Year and 2017-18 as Reference Year. It must be remembered that first edition of the report was published in February 2018. The current report has specifically highlighted and candidly admitted that even if the overall health sector in India  has significantly improved over decades, it still remains a critical area with an urgent need for improvement. Given that inescapable reality, NITI Aayog has devised this ingenious annual systematic tool of Health Index with the sole intention of drawing attention of the States/UTs that they are not performing up to the mark and more importantly motivate them to strive and take actions to reach the more brighter spots. It is a composite score which takes into account 23 indicators covering key aspects of health sector performance and for ensuring comparability among similar entities a three-tier classification has been adopted namely Larger States, Smaller States and UTs.
Arunachal comes in the Smaller States slab and as per the report, decrease in the state’s overall Health Index score has been largely attributed to the significant deterioration in performance of five indicators among various  others, which are TB treatment success rate, e-pay slip for all staff, functional 24x7 PHCs, IDSP reporting of L-form and quality accreditation of public health facilities.
Although this ranking apparently seems to be something of dejection for the state, for all practical purposes and with the motto of  building a more healthy Arunachal, it must be taken as a wake-up call to swing into action by taking multi-dimensional measures to do better next time.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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