6 States To Lose 20% Of National Health Mission Funds, Including Bihar, WB, MP

Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh along with hill states of Himachal Pradesh, J&K and Uttarakhand will miss out on 20% of Centre’s payout under National Health Mission for not performing well in improving health indicators.

The health ministry on Wednesday released the ‘Health Systems Strengthening Conditionality Report of states’ for 2018-19, which decides the disbursement of performance-based incentive or penalty under NHM budget.

The report suggests that Haryana, Kerala and Punjab along with Assam and Dadar & Nagar Haveli are among the top five performers on key health indicators.

States and Union Territories were ranked based on 7 key indicators which include operationalisation of the Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs), provisioning of mental health services in districts covered under the NHM programme, screening of 30 plus population for non-communicable diseases and grading of primary health centres (both urban and rural), among others.

The incremental improvement as per the NITI Aayog ranking of states on “Performance on Health Outcomes” is one of the major factors.

Ahead of PM’s focus on saving children from vaccine-preventable diseases, full immunization coverage was also made a qualifying criterion to be able to claim the incentives.

The states and UTs were eligible for conditionality assessment only if Empowered Action Group (EAG) states, North-Eastern (NE) and hill states were able to achieve at least 75% full immunization coverage and 80% for rest of the states and UTs.

In 2018-19, the national health mission decided to increase the performance-based incentive/penalty from 10% to 20% of the NHM budget, encouraging states to perform better.

This meant that the states which do not fulfil the criteria could lose up to 20% of funding under NHM. Around Rs 3265 crores of the NHM funds were put aside for disbursement to the states on the basis of the performance on the indicators.

Among the eight EAG states, four were incentivised, one state has earned no incentives or penalty and two states received penalty.

All the three hilly states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have received penalty due to non-fulfilment of conditions. Among the eight North-Eastern states, four could not fulfil the eligibility criteria. Of the remaining Assam, Tripura and Manipur earned incentives, the report stated.

Of the 11 remaining states, nine were incentivised and two were penalised.

Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Sikkim could not meet the minimum criteria of full immunisation of 75 per cent, therefore the progress made by the states was not considered for assessment and all the four states were penalised.

On NITI Aayog ranking of states on ”Performance on Health Outcomes” indicator, 20 out of the 36 states and UTs have shown progress, whereas 16 states or UTs have shown a decline in their performance compared to the previous year.

Also Read: ‘Malnutrition Is The Reason For 68 Per Cent Deaths Among Children Under 5’