The authors stated that vaccination is one of 11 key indicators of child survival and health. |Photo credit: Archive photo
A group of Indian researchers – a Chennai-based economist and his two daughters, both medical professionals – used data from the National Family Health Survey to build a study of child survival and survival across Indian states and union territories. health index (CSHI).
KR Shanmugam, former dean of the Madras School of Economics, said the idea behind developing a comprehensive CSHI was to provide a platform to assess the performance of India and its states, both retrospectively and prospectively. “While India aims to achieve developed country status by 2047, it performs poorly on various child survival and health indicators, and there are significant regional disparities across the country. Despite the reduction of newborns under the Sustainable Development Goals, and under-five mortality targets, but there are no monitoring systems in place to effectively assess overall and regional performance,” the paper states.
“Developing an index like this will not only help us understand the government’s approach and ability to meet its child health and survival obligations, but also identify regions/areas where gaps exist,” explained Dr. Shanmugam, his daughter, Omandullah Government Medical College alumnus Shakti Indra Shanmugam and Columbia University postdoctoral medical researcher Sri Karthika Shanumga provided health inputs to the paper recently published in Child Indicators Research, Peer reviewed journal.
Recently, the National Institute for Transformation of India (NITI Aayog), along with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the World Bank, started publishing the Annual Health Index, a composite index of 24 indicators that tracks overall and incremental performance across all Indian states and unions Territory. “While it takes into account some child health indicators, the focus is not just on child survival and health indicators,” Dr. Shanmugam explained.
The authors said they selected 11 key indicators representing child survival and health: 3 from population and household profiles, 1 each from infant/child mortality, maternal health, delivery care, childhood vaccinations and childhood anemia, 3 This comes from the way children are fed and their nutritional status. Assign equal weight to each parameter for comparison.
Their assessment showed that India’s CSHI value increased from 0.49 to 0.52. Within four years, push it into a higher-performing category. But if current trends continue, it will take about 30 years for India to improve its CSHI value to 0.75 and climb to the top of the list. Out of 35 districts, 5 districts including Lakshadweep, Puducherry, Kerala and Andaman and Nicobar Islands were rated as best performing, 25 districts were rated as good performing and 5 districts were rated as performing Rated as underperforming.
CSHI can also monitor the effectiveness of interventions, track changes in children’s health over time and enable policymakers to develop appropriate strategies to improve children’s health, Dr Shanmugam added.
Published – December 20, 2024 11:37 pm (IST)