Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar virtually addressed the Western Region Dissemination Workshop of the fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS), here today.

The Union Minister started her address by thanking the dignitaries present at the event and expressing her appreciation for NFHS for providing high-quality data on health and family welfare, and emerging issues in this area.

The NFHS provides estimates on key indicators related to population, family planning, child and maternal health, nutrition, adult health, and domestic violence, among others which play a crucial role in shaping health and welfare policies. The scope of the survey has expanded over the years and in addition to emerging population and health issues, several biomarkers have been included in NFHS-5 to cover diabetes, hypertension, anthropometric measurements, anaemia, HbA1c, D3 and antimalarial parasites.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Pawar said that “over the years, results from the various rounds of NFHS have been extensively used for evidence-based decision making and policy formulation.” She further said that “the results from NFHS-5 will be useful in setting benchmarks and examining the progress made in the health sector over time. Besides providing evidence for the effectiveness of ongoing programmes, the data from NFHS-5 helps in identifying the need for new programmes with an area specific focus and identifying groups that are most in need of essential services.”

The Minister highlighted that NFHS-5 results have been released at a critical juncture as they “help in assessing the progress made towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030 and help us take steps for achieving the goals.” She added that NFHS-5 provides data source for 27 SDG indicators.

Dr Pawar informed that “there is substantial increase in the maternal and child health indicators in some states/UTs. Institutional births have shown substantial increase and C-section births have also risen.” She however noted that “anaemia among women continues to remain a challenge and a lot more thinking needs to go in to address this issue.”

The Minister also informed that under the dynamic leadership of Honourable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, “aggressive implementation of Central Government programs like Swachh Bharat Mission has led to considerable improvement in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) indicators for States/UTs”. She noted that “there is improvement in child health and women’s empowerment indicators like ownership of house or land, use of mobile phone but at the same time violence against women is still existent and so there is much to do in this area as well.”

Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar ended her address by thanking all the dignitaries for their contribution to healthcare in India and urging them to “work in tandem and play supportive role to help the government not only formulate meaningful policies and programs but also to ensure that they get implemented and achieve the goals setup to make our country to achieve a vision of Quality health for all as envisioned by Honourable Prime Minister.”