K'taka ranks a poor 8th on healthcare front: Niti Aayog

Karnataka hasn’t fared too well on the healthcare front when compared to some of its neighbours and one of the probable reasons behind its not-so-impressive performance may be frequent transfers of officers running the health programmes, the Niti Aayog says in its latest report.

Out of 21 large states, Karnataka was at the eighth spot in 2017-18, a marginal improvement from the base year of 2015-16.

Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra occupy the top three slots in the list, while Tamil Nadu and Telangana follow Karnataka at ninth and tenth spots, respectively. Gujarat, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh stood at fourth, fifth and sixth spots.

On several individual parameters like neonatal mortality, under-five mortality rate, low birth weight among the newborn, sex ratio at birth and institutional delivery, Karnataka remains behind its neighbours, says the report - ‘Healthy States, Progressive India: Report on Rank of States and UTs’.

One of the factors identified by the central government think-tank behind the success of a healthcare campaign is continuation of three key officers – principal secretary, mission director (National Health Mission) and director, health services -in their respective posts at least for three years. It is here that Karnataka faltered.

While in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the officers remained at their position for 26 and 24 months respectively, in Karnataka they were moved out of the health departments after 6.7 months. West Bengal topped the chart with 28 months.

Out of 21 states, Karnataka comes at the bottom, when it comes to average occupancy of an officer in the three key posts over the last three years. The state is worse than Haryana (7.3 months) and Chhattisgarh (9 months).

“A stable tenure for key administrative positions is critical to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of public health programmes,” says the NITI report.

Karnataka also has lots of vacancies to fill up, particularly in the posts of auxiliary-nurse-cum-midwives in the sub-centres.

Karnataka and Bihar are the only two states with more than 25% vacancies in this category among the large states.

In addition, Karnataka also has nearly 22% shortage in staff nurses in the primary and community healthcare centres. On the contrary, there are doctors in most of the sub-centres and PHCs presumably due to the state government’s policy of mandatory rural posting for fresh MBBS graduates.

Kerala occupied the top slot in terms of health performance among large states followed by Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, whereas Uttar Pradesh and Bihar remained at the bottom, according to the Niti Aayog’s second round of Health Index.

The ranking was done under three categories - large states, small states and union territories.