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Gandhinagar: Under the leadership of Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and the guidance of Health Minister Rishikesh Patel, the State Health Department has achieved a proud achievement.
The fourth report of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Index has been released recently by the Government of India's NITI Aayog. In which the state of Gujarat has secured the top position for the second consecutive year by securing the first position in the category of states in goal number three – health and well-being.
State Health Minister Rishikesh Patel congratulated all the health workers of the state for this proud achievement. He dedicated this achievement to the efforts of all the health workers of the state.
It is worth mentioning here that NITI Aayog publishes the achievements of all the states and union territories in the 17 development goals set globally under the Sustainable Development Goals Index through relative ranks by scoring them in various indicators.
The first report of the SDG Index was published by NITI Aayog in the year 2018. In the year 2018, the score of Gujarat state in SDG health goals was 52. Which has reached 90 in the report of the year 2023-24.
The SDG target scores are steadily improving due to the State Government's commitment towards health and effective implementation of population-oriented policies and health services and schemes.
In the second report of the year 2019-20, Gujarat state moved from 17th to 8th position with an increase of 67 points in the health goal score. After that, in the third report of the SDG Index, Gujarat state reached the first position in the category of states in the whole country with 86 points.
Today, in the report of the year 2023-24, Gujarat has been ranked first for the second consecutive time in the category of states of the whole of India. Not only this, while India's score is 77, Gujarat's score is 90.
For this ranking, 11 health-related parameters are reviewed for health and well-being. These include maternal mortality rate, under-five mortality rate, child immunization, institutional delivery, registration of TB cases, HIV cases, life expectancy, road accident mortality rate, suicide rate, health workforce ratio and out-of-pocket health expenditure, etc.
Apart from this, the state government is also making continuous efforts to ensure that there is adequate manpower available for health services in the state by constantly increasing the number of doctors, nurses and midwives-ANMs per 10,000 population. Three goals have been achieved continuously.
Comparing Gujarat's status on health measures in the previously released Sustainable Goals Index and this year's status, maternal mortality rate has declined from 75 (SDG Index 3) to 57 (SDG Index 4). While under-five mortality rate has declined from 31 (SDG Index 3) to 24 (SDG Index 4). Immunization coverage among children aged 9-11 years has increased from 87 (SDG Index 3) to 95.95 (SDG Index 4). Institutional delivery (%) increased from 99.50% (SDG Index 3) to 99.94% (SDG Index 4). HIV case fatality rate per 1000 new reported cases has declined from 0.05 (SDG Index 3) to 0.03 (SDG Index 4).
Additionally, compared to the average ranking of Sustainable Development Goals in the country, the average life expectancy in Gujarat is 70.5 years as against the national average of 70 years. The institutional fertility rate in Gujarat is 99.94 percent as against the national average of 97.18 percent, the maternal mortality ratio in Gujarat is 57 as against 97 and the availability of 10 thousand health workers is 55.56 as against 49.45 in the country.
Notably, the SDG India Index is published every year by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, assessing 113 indicators aligned with 17 goals.
This assessment methodology collects information on the performance of each state and union territory for each criterion and ranks them based on overall scoring.
