National Family Health Survey was done in two phases, once in between June2019 and January 2020 and once between January 2020 and April 2021. The survey released by Health Ministry showed that the C-section birth rate in the country is 21.5%. This is much higher than the ideal rate (10%-15%) according To WHO. The percentage in the last survey conducted in 2015-2016 was 17.2%.
There is much bigger difference as far as the government and private sectors are concerned. 47.4 % babies born in a private hospital are delivered by a c-section and 14.3% in the government sector are delivered by a surgical procedure. A more detailed look at the statistics show that more people opt for private facilities as compared to the government ones.
While this trend has been seen in most of the states in the country, some states have shown different trends. Tripura and Goa saw an increase in caesarean births but the percentage went down in private facilities and up in public facilities.
Nagaland and Mizoram recorded a decrease in caesarean births. The total caesarean births in Mizoram are just 10.8% of the total births. This went down from 12.7% recorded in the last survey. The percentage in Nagaland is 5.8%.
The total fertility rate (TFR) went down to 2.0 from 2.2. This could be due to better family planning by people now. Fully vaccinated children in the age group of 12-23months went up from 63% – 76%.
The NHFS -5 survey has been conducted on around 6.1 lakh households and it has covered around 7,24,115 females and 1,01,839 males .
