Govt explains why key indicators were missing from NFHS-6 fact sheets

The Union government said the indicators were selected based on the Technical Advisory Committee's recommendations, aligned with the government's data harmonisation initiative, and limited to key heal

The Union government on Tuesday explained why several indicators that appeared in the fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) were missing from the NFHS-6 fact sheets. It said the indicators were selected based on the recommendations of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), in line with the government's data harmonisation initiative, and as part of a decision to limit the fact sheets to key health indicators.

 

The clarification came over two months after the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) released the NFHS-6 (2023-24) National and State/UT Fact Sheets on May 29.

 

As Business Standard had reported earlier, the latest survey retained 101 key indicators, compared with 131 in NFHS-5, leaving out 43 indicators including anaemia prevalence, sex ratio at birth, infant and child mortality rates, and household use of clean cooking fuel. The survey, conducted during 2023-24, covered 679,238 households across 715 districts.

 

 

Responding to a question in the Rajya Sabha on the absence of such indicators from the NFHS-6 fact sheets, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel said the indicators were finalised based on the recommendations of the TAC constituted for NFHS-6.

 

The committee comprised representatives from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, NITI Aayog, the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, and other government departments.

‘Data harmonisation’

The government said the TAC recommended finalising the indicators "in line with the Data Harmonisation initiatives of the Government of India (GoI)", to avoid inconsistencies arising from "fragmented and unharmonised data available across different official data sources".

 

It also said the committee recommended that the fact sheets “are intended to present only key indicators, particularly those related to health and family welfare, so as to better highlight the key takeaways of the survey".

Separate survey for anaemia estimates

The government also explained why anaemia prevalence was not included in the NFHS-6 fact sheets.

 

It said the MoHFW, “after due deliberations”, decided to adopt anaemia prevalence figures from “an independent survey conducted by Indian Council of Medical Research utilising the gold standard intravenous method for haemoglobin testing.”