Even as the District level Health Survey (DlHS) has kicked-off across the States, Union Health Ministry is all set to dole out over Rs 200 crore to conduct yet another almost similar exercise —fourth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) — to get a “comprehensive” picture of the health, nutrition and population in the country.
Intriguingly, soon after the third round of the NFHS (2005-06), the Ministry had discontinued it. It announced retaining just the two other existing health surveys, the Annual Health Survey (AHS), which is conducted in nine backward States including Assam, and the other is DlHS.
However, the AHS and the DlHS do not cover all the indicators in the NFHS, the most significant omission being nutrition.
Sources said the decision to conduct the NFHS (2013-14) came following pressure from nutrition committee in the PMO which had expressed its displeasure with the Health Ministry for ignoring an important health indicator ie nutrition.
The three successive rounds of NFHS had established that child malnutrition rates in India is among the highest in the world and nearly double that of poorer countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Now, with the proposed fourth round, we hope to get the data on this important health indicator on the condition of the children. A set of questionnaires have already been framed for the fourth round of the survey to be conducted between 2013 and 2014.
“These will soon be peer reviewed by the Steering Committee on NFHS which is likely to meet soon,” said Faujdar Ram, Director of the Bombay-based Indian Institute of Population Studies (IIPS) which had conducted the past surveys.
The extensive exercise covering five lakh people will take next three years. A senior health official admitted that the Centre’s shortsightedness in launching the DlHS when NFHS-IV was also to be planned at the district level. The questionnaires could have been merged, he said.
Also, the questionnaires in the survey are just repeat of previous survey conducted in 2005-06; focusing on domestic violence, nutrition and population. They also touch upon new challenges like non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as diabetes and hypertension.
Despite this fact, India is touted as the capital of diabetes in the world and the Union Health Ministry is allocating huge money for the treatment and prevention of the NCD. The fourth round proposes to cover 5 lakh persons against 1.20 lakh covered in the NFHS-III.