A Comparative Study of Maternal and Child Health Indicators of Tribal and Non-Tribal Areas of Selected States in India

The tribal populations in India continue to experience lack of infrastructure; development facilities and services, health challenges like malnutrition, child mortality and Malaria are disproportionately high in these areas. Health indicators of Schedule Tribes continue to fare lower than the general population due to many such challenges. This article attempts to compare the status of (selected) Maternal and Child Health (MCH) indicators of the tribal dominated areas and the non-tribal areas in the states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. This study was carried out utilizing the secondary data from public domains. Data on performance of 8 indicators, for approximately 155 districts of the 5 mentioned states was tabulated, which we have used to derive the average performances for scheduled and non-scheduled areas. The study used the MCH data from National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 conducted in 2019-2020 and HMIS data of the year 2020. The scheduled (tribal) areas show higher percentage of Infant Mortality Rates, Maternal Mortality Rates and Still Birth Rates compared to the non-scheduled (non-tribal) areas, whereas the proportions for Female Literacy, completion of 4 ANC checkups and Institutional Births remain almost similar between the scheduled and non-scheduled areas. The proportion of mothers who consumed iron-folic acid tablets for 180 days during pregnancy remained low in scheduled areas. Considerable differences were observed in the performance of scheduled and non-scheduled areas of the selected states, on different selected indicators.

Key words: Tribal Health, Indigenous health, Maternal and Child Health, Scheduled areas.