Telangana among top 3 states in health service index: Niti Aayog report

Hyderabad: Telangana has emerged as one of the two states that demonstrated “strong overall performance and showed most improvements” on various health services parameters, according to the Niti Aayog. The top planning body in the country said Mizoram and Telangana were the only two states that demonstrated strong overall performance and showed most improvements in between the 2018-19, and 2019-20.

Niti Aayog also said Telangana was among the top three states in the country in overall performance in the health sector. In its report, ‘Healthy States Progressive India’ released on Monday, the Niti Aayog said among the larger states, Telangana’s overall performance, as well as incremental performance on various parameters, put it in the third place among larger states, behind Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

In its previous report for 2018-19, the Niti Aayog had placed Telangana in the fourth place in the country.

The state attained universal full immunisation of children and total case notification of tuberculosis; had fully functional first referral units, and all primary health centres (PHC) and urban PHCs were functioning as health and wellness centres, it said. The state also had operation theatres and labour rooms in all district hospitals, and had no vacancies of auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs) in sub-centres and medical officers in PHCs, the Niti Aayog report said.

Meanwhile, health minister T. Harish Rao welcomed the Niti Aayog findings, and said Telangana, under the directions of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, was making significant progress on all aspects of healthcare. The state had been strengthening infrastructure and services in all government hospitals which were serving more and more people, for treating a wide spectrum of health issues, he said.