Nagaland, Tripura top in reducing infant mortality among small states

Agartala: The northeastern states of Nagaland and Tripura have topped among the small states in India in reducing Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), an official said.

According to latest official data, the IMR in Nagaland is 17 per 1,000 live births (0-1 years) while in Tripura it is 21 against the national average of 40 deaths per 1,000 live births.

"The best performing large states for decline in IMR award was given to Haryana and West Bengal. In this category the best performing small states were Nagaland and Tripura," Tripura's National Health Mission (NHM) director Shailesh Kumar Yadav told reporters.

Union Health and Family Welfare Minister J.P. Nadda gave away the awards to the best performing states at the third National Summit on "Good and Replicable Practices and Innovations in Public Health Facilities" at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh last week.

The official said that to further reduce the IMR, the Tripura government has adopted 13-point steps. These include, 60 delivery centres were made into ideal delivery centres with upgraded labour rooms, new born care corners established in all 102 delivery centres and eight new born stabilisation units set up in sub-divisional hospitals.

Yadav said that a special scheme "Mayer Ghar" (mother's house), under which the labour rooms will be equipped with all facilities, are being operationalised to reduce home deliveries in selected interior and tribal areas and thereby cut down on maternal and infant deaths.

"The percentage of institutional delivery (delivery in hospitals and health centres) in Tripura is 89 per cent against the national average of 80," he said quoting the data of Health Management Information System under the union Health and Family Welfare Ministry.

Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry Secretary Bhanu Pratap Sharma in a letter to Tripura Chief Secretary Yashpal Singh informed that the state government would be given one per cent incentive over and above the stipulated resource envelope for performing well in the last financial year (2015-16) in timely utilisation of central funds and in undertaking health sector reforms.

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) 2015-16 report, IMR of less than 51 deaths per 1,000 live births took place in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and Union Territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Puducherry, with Andaman recording the lowest of 10 deaths and Madhya Pradesh recording 51.