Update on NFHS-5 & Rural Health Statistics

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has released the National Report of the fifth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS), which is available on the public domain (http://rchiips.org/nfhs/).The major findings evident from NFHS-5 (2019-21) as compared to NFHS-4 (2015-16) is given at Annexure I.

The information on various important indicators captured in NFHS-5 are used for monitoring the SDG related health goals. India has made significant progress in various SDG health indicators like Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the proportion of pregnant women who had an ANC visit in the first trimester, Institutional Births, Child immunization, etc. List of SDG indicators, where NFHS-5 is the data source is given at Annexure II.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has released the Rural Health Statistics (RHS) publication for the year 2020-21. It is a vital source of information on health infrastructure and human resources available in the public health institutions of all States/UTs.

As per RHS 2020-21, there are 1,57,819 Sub Centres (SC), 30,579 Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and 5,951 Community Health Centres (CHCs) respectively functioning in rural and urban areas of the country. Besides this, a total of 1,224 Sub Divisional/Sub District Hospital and 764 District Hospitals (DHs) are operational throughout the country.

The primary responsibility for ensuring the better health services and facilities lies with the State Governments/UT Administrations. Accordingly, the Ministry has conducted National, Regional and State level workshops for dissemination of the key findings of the NFHS-5. During these workshops the key findings of NFHS-5 have been shared with the State Governments/UT Administration, Central Ministries and other Stakeholders for policy/research purpose and for effective monitoring and implementation of the various Schemes/programmes.

The Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar stated this in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

Annexure I

The major key findings evident from NFHS-5 (2019-21) compared to NFHS-4 (2015-16)

• India has made striking progress in population control measures in recent times. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR), i.e. the average number of children per woman, has further declined from 2.2 to 2.0 at the National level between NFHS-4 & 5.
• Overall Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) has increased substantially from 54% to 67% in the country. Use of modern methods of contraceptives has also increased in almost all States/UTs. Unmet needs of family Planning have witnessed a significant decline from13 percent to 9 percent. The unmet need for spacing, which remained a major issue in India in the past has come down to less than 4 percent.
• The proportion of pregnant women who had an ANC visit in the first trimester has increased from 59 to 70 percent between NFHS-4 and NFHS-5. A considerable progress is noticed in percentage of mothers who had at least 4 ANC visits at the National level from 51 percent in 2015-16 to 58 percent in 2019-21.
• Institutional Births have increased substantially from 79 percent to 89 percent in India. Even in rural areas around 87 percent births are delivered in health facilities and same is 94 percent in urban areas.
• In NFHS-5, more than three-fourths (76.4%) children age 12-23 months were fully immunized, compared with 62 percent in NFHS-4.