'Improvement in India's health sector slow but steady'

Ahead of the fourth edition of National Family Health Survey (NFHS), experts have said there has been a marked improvement in India's health sector, but the pace is slow and results differ from state to state.
"There has been improvement in the health sector. It is slow but steady. The results during last few surveys have been different in each state and progress has happened on various fronts including family welfare," said Arnold Fred, a senior fellow of ICS International, an agency involved in the 2015 survey.
"In the family welfare programme, we have noticed that there has been an increase in the use of contraceptives. The fertility rate has gone down. Previously, the average was four children per couple, which is now two-and-half children per couple," Fred told reporters in Panaji.

NFHS's fourth edition would be conducted across the country from January 1, 2015 onwards.
Goa Institute of Management (GIM), which will work along with ICS International, has been selected as the field agency for conducting survey in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Goa.
The NFHS-4 survey will cover 5,71,660 households across all 640 districts covering all states and union territories of the country.

GIM's director C Joe Arun said the last survey was conducted in 2005-06.
The current survey will cover a range of health-related issues including fertility, infant and child mortality, maternal and child health, prenatal mortality and adolescent reproductive health, family welfare, non-communicable diseases, HIV, domestic violence and sanitation.

Fred said the exercise is a representative survey and every household in India has equal probability of getting selected for it.
"This will be for the first time that at the end of the survey, we will be able to get district-wise estimates and the current exercise is six times bigger than previous ones," he added.