UP Health Minister on 26th June defended his government over the dilapidated health facilities in Uttar Pradesh and attributed the latest report of the NITI Aayog’s Health Index showing UP in the bottom of the list, to the failure of the previous government in the state.

He claimed that the report was of 2017 when the Yogi Adityanath government had just come to power. "We have inherited the dilapidated health system in UP from the previous government who did nothing. But after we came to the power, things have started to improve," he told reporters in Lucknow. The Minister, however, said that health is a big sector and it will take sometime for improvements to show. He likened the scenario to planting of a mango seed, which takes at least least four years to bear fruits.

"The main improvement of the health system is directly attached to cleanness and UP has achieved a distinction in becoming the top state in the country to construct toilets," he claimed. He also said that already the government has achieved a big in controlling AES/JE virus when the death rate has dropped by 67 per cent during the past two years time.

On 25th June, NITI Aayog’s Health Index report, titled “Healthy States, Progressive India”, through various indicators like child mortality rates, sex ratios at birth, immunisation rates, proportion of people living with HIV/AIDS, notification of tuberculosis and health care facilities was released. The reference years for most indicators is 2017 or 2018 and the base years to gauge improvement are between one and three years before the reference year. It was prepared in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the World Bank.

The ranking was done in three categories – larger states, smaller states and Union territories. Among the larger states, Kerala, with a score of 74.01, Andhra Pradesh (65.13), Maharashtra (63.99), Gujarat (63.52) and Punjab (63.01) were the best in overall performance, while Uttarakhand (40.2), Madhya Pradesh (38.39), Odisha (35.97), Bihar (32.11) and Uttar Pradesh (28.61) were the worst.

In terms of incremental performance in index scores from the base year to reference year, however, the top three ranked states were Haryana (up 6.55 points), Rajasthan (up 6.3 points) and Jharkhand (up 5.99 points). Bihar (down 6.35 points) and Uttar Pradesh (down 5.08 points) registered the biggest decrease.

The report attributed the decline in the overall Health Index score of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha between the base year and the reference year to the deterioration of performances of several indicators.