chennai nearly a fortnight after the niti aayogs health index report pushed tamil nadu to rank 9 the union health ministry seems to have formally accepted the states protest on friday union health minster harsh vardhan told parliament that the percentage of children covered under immunization programme in tamil nadu has touched 9885 compared to an all india average of 9176in a reply to the question raised by rekha verma on vaccination programme harsh vardhan said full immunization coverage has gone up across lowcoverage districts of the country he listed out the details of children covered under the immunization programme in each state while in statesut like andhra pradesh chandigarh daman and diu and uttarakhand the coverage is more than 100 it may include children who are migrants jammu and kashmir and tamil nadu have above 98 coverage in 201819tamil nadu had two deaths due to diphtheria in 2018 180 across india and two deaths 254 across india due to japanese encephalitis in 2017 there were no deaths reported in the state due to whooping cough or neonatal tetanus between 2016 and 2018 it said nevertheless tamil nadus record for 201617 7570 and 201718 7528 has remained unchangedthe healthy states progressive india report said the immunization coverage in tamil nadu had dropped from 827 in 20152016 to 761 in 20172018 state health minister c vijayabaskar said the niti aayog has got its numbers and formulas wrong in at least two key parameters institutional deliveries and immunization coverage of children the healthy states report put tn far below its performance because the centre decided to take exaggerated approximate numbers instead of realtime numbers for base reference he saidwhile the central agency fixed an expected live birth target of 118 lakh for tamil nadu based on crude birth rate and census data even though the realtime data rate captured by the state though pregnancy and infant cohort monitoring and evaluvation picme showed 94 lakh births if the actual live birth in the state is taken as the denominator the institutional delivery will be 998 against the 805 mentioned in the niti aayog report he also said immunization coverage mentioned in the report doesnt depict the correct picture he said in a letter dated june 27however harsh vardhan did not explicitly agree with the states allegation replying to another question he said the common reasons of underperformance of states inter alia include improper reporting limited infrastructure administrative issues and delay in funding the deterioration between base year and reference year was primarily due to the performance in various indices such as total fertility rate low birth weight sex ratio at birth tb treatment success rate quality accreditation of public health facilitiesbut that didnt matter to most officials the ministers latest immunization coverage data reported by the states ut on july 17 is based on birth cohort reported by the state we are glad they accepted our point said a senior official