Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das on Friday expressed happiness over Jharkhand emerging as one of the top three large states in the country in terms of annual incremental performance on health indicators of the NITI Aayog.

"We are committed to provide best health services to people of the state. We appreciate the efforts of the Health Department for taking Jharkhand to the top...," said the Chief Minister. Giving credit for this achievement to the people of the state, he said the state government was dedicated to fulfil the idea of 'Healthy Jharkhand' and 'Healthy India' under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi."

"Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh showed the maximum gains in improvement of health outcomes from base to reference year in indicators, such as neonatal mortality rate, under-five mortality rate, full immunisation coverage, institutional deliveries and People Living with HIV (PLHIV) on anti-retroviral therapy," the "Healthy States, Progressive India" report said.

Jharkhand tops in the larger states by scoring 6.87 marks in incremental progress from the base to reference year. However, the report noted that states that start at lower levels of development were generally at an advantage in notching up incremental progress over states with high health index scores. It was a challenge for states with high index scores to even maintain their performance levels.