Andhra Pradesh ranks fourth in NITI Aayog’s Health Index report

According to the federal think tank NITI Aayog’s Health Index report, Andhra Pradesh was ranked fourth as the state with the best overall health performance. The state has slipped to fourth place from its earlier third place in the previous year’s Health Index report.

The Health Index report informed that Andhra Pradesh showed a 4.47 incremental progress from base year (2018-2019) to reference year (2019-2020). The State received 65.31 in the reference year and 60.84 in the base year.

It could be noted that Kerala ranked #1 for the fourth consecutive year and India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh is at the bottom of the list. However, UP was at the top of the list when it came to ‘incremental performance’. It registered the highest incremental change from the base year to the reference year with improved performance in 33 of 43 indicators / sub-indicators.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh’s neighbour, Telangana has emerged as one of the two states that demonstrated ‘strong overall performance and showed most improvements’ on various health services parameters.

NITI Aayog’s State Health Index is an annual tool to assess the performance of states and union territories (UTs). It is a weighted composite index based on 24 indicators grouped under the domains of ‘Health Outcomes’, ‘Governance and Information’, and ‘Key Inputs/Processes’. Each domain has been assigned weights based on its importance with higher scores for outcome indicators.

NITI Aayog’s State Health Index has been compiled and published since 2017. The reports aim to nudge states, and UTs, towards building robust health systems and improving service delivery.

The entire Health Index report can be accessed here.