National Family Health Survey (NFHS)
The NFHS is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India.
Three rounds of the survey have been conducted since the first survey in 1992-93.
The survey provides state and national information for India on
Fertility
Infant and child mortality
Maternal and child health
The practice of family planning
Reproductive health
The survey provides state and national information for India on
Nutrition
Anaemia
Utilization and quality of health and family planning services.
Each successive round of the NFHS has had two specific goals:
To provide essential data on health and family welfare needed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and other agencies for policy and programme purposes.
To provide information on important emerging health and family welfare issues.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW), Government of India, designated the International Institute for Population Sciences(IIPS) Mumbai, as the nodal agency, responsible for providing coordination and technical guidance for the survey.
IIPS collaborated with a number of Field Organizations (FO) for survey implementation.
Each FO was responsible for conducting survey activities in one or more states covered by the NFHS.
Technical assistance for the NFHS was provided mainly by ICF (USA) and other organizations on specific issues.
The funding for different rounds of NFHS has been provided by USAID, DFID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, UNFPA, and MOHFW, GOI.
Recently in news
K.S. James, director of the IIPS at Mumbai, under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has been suspended, ostensibly to allow for an investigation of recruitment practices in the institution.
A media report (The Wire, July 28) states that the development follows the publication of the fifth National Family Health Survey report (NFHS-5), produced by the institute.
It has been speculated that the government is peeved by some of its findings, and hence the move.
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