Telangana: Health workforce density poor, but other indicators see improvement

HYDERABAD:  The Sustainable Development Goal 3 rankings in Telangana pose a worrying trend for the State amidst a raging pandemic. As per the same, even though the State’s overall performance in the SDG-3 “Good Health and Well being” section has improved, it’s performance has worsened in some fronts, especially regarding recruiting healthcare workforce.

As per this facet of the SDG Goal 3 ranking, which is on the number of nurses, midwives and physicians working per 10,000 population, the number of workers has fallen from 11 to 10 — indicating a downward trend. This is far off from the global target as well. 

As per the “Monitoring Health in the Sustainable Development Goals: 2017” reoport, the global aim is to have a skilled health professional density of 44.5 or 45 physicians/nurses/midwives per 10,000 population. The aim is to substantially increase health financing and the recruitment, development, training and retention of the health workforce. 

Telangana, however, has done well on other fronts between 2019 and 2020, like on maternal mortality – which fell from 76 to 63 per 1,00,000 live births. The ‘under 5’ mortality has fallen from 32 to 30 per 1000 live births.  

Institutional deliveries have improved from 71.8 per cent to 99.9 per cent. Telangana has  done well in all these sectors due to the State government’s pet projects on mother and child healthcare, such as the KCR Kit, Amma Vodi pick-up and drop, etc.