Mandaviya Releases National Family Health Survey Report: India's Total Fertility Rate Further Declines To 2.0

NFHS-5 shows an overall improvement in SDG indicators in all States/UTs, including fertility rates, institutional births, vaccination coverage among children and sanitation facilities.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Thursday released the National Report of the fifth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) at the 'Swasthya Chintan Shivir' being held at Gujarat's Vadodara.

The NFHS-5 survey work has been conducted in around 6.37 lakh sample households from 707 districts (as on March, 2017) of the country from 28 States and 8 UTs, covering 7,24,115 women and 1,01,839 men to provide dis-aggregated estimates up to district level.

In comparison to NFHS-4, the scope of NFHS-5 was expanded by adding new dimensions such as death registration, pre-school education, expanded domains of child immunization, components of micro-nutrients to children, menstrual hygiene, frequency of alcohol and tobacco use, additional components of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), expanded age range for measuring hypertension and diabetes among all aged 15 years and above, which will give requisite inputs for monitoring and strengthening existing programmes and evolving new strategies for policy intervention.

The Ministry noted that NFHS-5 provides information on important indicators which are helpful in tracking the progress of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the country. NFHS-4 (2015-16) estimates were used as baseline values for a large number of SDG indicators and NFHS- 5 (2019-21) will provide data for around 34 SDG indicators at various levels, it added.

Progress from NFHS-4 to NFHS-5

• India has made significant progress in population control measures in recent times. The Total Fertility Rates (TFR), an average number of children per women, has further declined from 2.2 to 2.0 at the national level between NFHS-4 & 5. Only five States in India (Bihar, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Manipur) are above replacement level of fertility of 2.1.
• Institutional Births have increased substantially from 79 per cent to 89 per cent in India. In rural areas, around 87 per cent births are delivered in Institutions while it is 94 percent in urban areas.
• In NFHS-5, more than three-fourths (77 per cent) children aged 12-23 months were fully immunized, compared with 62 per cent in NFHS-4.
• NFHS-5 shows an overall improvement in SDG indicators in all States/UTs. The participation of women in decision making is high, ranging from 80 per cent in Ladakh to 99 per cent in Nagaland and Mizoram. The prevalence of women having a bank or savings account that they use has increased from 53 to 79 per cent in the last 4 years.
• Between NFHS-4 and NFHS-5, the use of clean cooking fuel and improved sanitation facilities, including a hand-washing facility with soap and water have improved considerably. There has been a substantial increase in the proportion of households using improved sanitation facilities, which could be attributed to the Swatch Bharat Mission programme.

In the NFHS-6, which is scheduled to be conducted during 2023-24, the government proposes to cover various new domain areas. These would include:

"COVID-19 hospitalization and distress financing, COVID-19 vaccinations, Director Benefit Transfers (DBT) under various welfare schemes initiated by GoI, Migration, Utilization of health services Health and wellness centre, health insurance/ health financing, digital literacy, counselling on family planning after abortion and incentives under new methods of family planning, quality of family planning programme, menstrual hygiene, marital choice, visit by community health workers for health awareness and needs, supplementary nutrition from the Anganwadi/ ICDS center while breastfeeding, blood transfusion (month and year), financial inclusion among women, knowledge of anaemia, Hepatitis B &C, Syphilis etc," the ministry said in the report.