Geographical analysis

Department of Geography & GIS

Article

Geographical analysis

Year: 2021, Volume: 10, Issue: 2, Pages: 23-29

Original Article

Modelling the Determinants of Child Health in India: A Geospatial Approach

Received Date:22 June 2021, Accepted Date:10 August 2021

Abstract

In general, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Although, there is much more care has to be provided in case of the children who are under the age 5. Child health is a fundamental important goal for the future generations to sustain healthy. Over the past few decades, the world has recoded a swift progress in improving the child health and reducing the child mortality. However, a UNICEF - 2019 report states, 6.1 million children and young adults have died, mostly from preventable causes; of which 5.2 million were newborn babies. India accounts one fifth (25 million) of the world’s annual child births. Nearly, 3.5 million children are born too early, among them 1.7 million are born with defects. India, despite the increase in the number of health care Centres across the country, has to improve the quality of the health care services in those Centres to reduce the child mortality. Also, health care systems in the remote tribal areas, where 21 percent of the total deliveries are recorded, need much more ambitious plans and budget to be expended to increase their access to the health care systems. The current study, with the application of geospatial technology, maps the state level health care systems across India and models the relationship and prioritize the states for immediate action plans to attain the goals of the National Health Policy. The study utilized select data from the Annual Reports for the year 2019-2020 of Health Management Information System (HMIS) and Rural Health Survey (RHS).

Keywords: Child health, Healthcare systems, HMIS, RHS

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Copyright

©  2021 Prakash & Jegankumar This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Published By Bangalore University, Bengaluru, Karnataka

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