The National Family Health Survey is a survey that is conducted all over India.
It is commissioned by the Ministry of Health and conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai.
The Family Health Survey covers topics like literacy, health, vaccination, malnutrition, etc.
Information for this survey was collected in two phases – Phase one from 17 June 2019 to 30 January 2020 and Phase two from 2 January 2020 to 30 April 2021.
Information was collected from 636,699 households, 724,115 women, and 101,839 men.
For comparison, information from the National Family Health Survey – 4 was also included in the report.
The key indicators for India are (comparisons are with NFHS 4 (2014-15 data)
The sex ratio (number of females to males) has gone to 1020 (1020 females per 1000 males) from 991.
Total Fertility Rate has dropped from 2.2 to 2.0. There are only five States in India, which are above replacement level of fertility of 2.1. They are Bihar (2.98), Meghalaya (2.91), Uttar Pradesh (2.35), Jharkhand (2.26) Manipur (2.17). The replacement rate, according to specialists, is 2.1 (the rate at which the total population will neither increase nor decrease in the future).
In children’s health, there is some improvement in all indicators – stunting (low height for age), underweight (low weight for age), low weight for height, and prevalence of anemia (lack of iron) among children up to 5 years of age.
The percentage of women who have a bank account that they themselves use has gone up from 53% to 78.6%
Immunisation also saw improvement – 77% children age 12-23 months were fully immunized, compared with 62 percent in NFHS-4.
NFHS-6 is scheduled to be conducted during 2023-24.
The Census of India, which was also due in 2021, is yet to begin. (Census is the counting of the total population of India. It also gives various indicators related to health and employment).