The Council for Social Development (CSD) has come out with a comprehensive statistical compendium providing a detailed picture of the health and demographic status in Telangana.
Released by Finance department special chief secretary K. Ramakrishna Rao, the compendium is based on two rounds of national family health survey – round 4 (2015-16) and round 5 (2019-20) conducted after the formation of the State. Published for the Planning department, the compendium envisages strengthening the database of the new State giving a holistic picture of progress in terms of demographic and health indicators of each district in the State.
It would be useful in understanding the status of district-wise performance and where the districts stand as it had identified the highest burden districts in terms of each indicator with a base to the highest performing district. According to the CSD, data pertaining to 99 indicators was captured at the district level in indicators such as population and household profile, characteristics of adults, marriage and fertility, infant and child mortality rates, use of family planning methods, child vaccination, vitamin A supplementation, and nutritional status among adults.
The compendium had been prepared in such a manner that socio-economic attributes like gender, social categories, location, economic status based on occupation, and level of education could be disaggregated for each of the indicators. The CSD said the compendium would fulfil the objective of delivering robust demographic and health data for the government enabling it to build policy infrastructure for a healthy population.
This was a first step towards bringing out data-based volumes and the compendium could be used as ready reckoner for academicians and researchers focused on the State. The work would provide inputs for framing policy interventions as it had compared and presented the data between two rounds of the NFHS on demographic and health indicators.
