Among UTs, city healthiest

Dushyant Singh Pundir 

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 25

Among all union territories, Chandigarh has been ranked first with an improvement of 11 points in terms of the overall performance followed by Dadra and Nagar Haveli with an improvement of 22 points in the overall performance. This has been revealed in the Health Index-2019 released by the NITI Aayog today.

The overall performance index score of Chandigarh stood at 63.62 with an incremental change of 11.25 from the base year (2015-16) to the reference year (2017-18).

Three UTs — Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Puducherry — improved their rankings from the base year to the reference year. Dadra and Nagar Haveli showed a huge improvement from the seventh to the second position, Chandigarh moved from the second to the first spot and Puducherry from the fifth to the fourth position. 

Four UTs slipped in the ranking – Lakshadweep from the first to the third, Delhi from the third to the fifth, Andaman and Nicobar Islands from the fourth to the sixth and Daman and Diu from the sixth to the seventh spot.

Top in all health domains

In the domain of health outcomes, Chandigarh scored the highest with 67.2 points as compared to Daman and Diu’s lowest score of 36 in the reference year. Chandigarh has shown an incremental change of 3.58 from the base year in this domain.

In the key inputs and processes domain, Chandigarh scored the highest with 75.3 points, while Delhi scored the lowest with 31.8 points. An incremental change of 23.16 was recorded by Chandigarh in this domain.

Four UTs (Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands) improved their performance, whereas the performance of the other three UTs (Puducherry, Lakshadweep and Delhi) has declined.

Dadra and Nagar Haveli had the highest number of indicators (around 60 per cent) where the performance has improved between the reference and base years followed  by Chandigarh with the second highest number of indicators (around 50 per cent) having improved in the reference year.

Increase in TB notification 

Big variations were witnessed in the TB notification rate in Chandigarh. A significant increase of 218 from 305 in the base year to 523 in the reference year was observed.

The Government of India had established a target of over 85 per cent success rate for TB treatment. Four of the seven UTs showed some improvement in the treatment success rate, including Chandigarh (86.8 per cent). An improvement by 1.2 per cent was witnessed in the TB rate from the base year.

While no vacancy of specialist doctor was reported in Chandigarh hospitals in 2015-16, an increase of 11 per cent in the vacancy of specialists was witnessed in the reference year (2017-18).

100% birth registration

The registration of birth not only provides the child with an official identification document, but also allows for area-specific estimation of birth rates. Chandigarh has achieved universal, that is 100 per cent registration of births.