NFHS collected data on COVID deaths, toilets and fuel, but information missing from factsheets

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-6 collected data about COVID-19 but the data has not made it to the factsheets released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare released a few days back. The survey was conducted in two phases, one from May 28, 2023 to February 26, 2024, and phase two from February 7, 2024 to December 31, 2024 by 27 Field Agencies (FAs) and gathered information from 6,79,238 households, 716,397 women, and 100,977 men.

Seven questions focused on COVID

There were seven questions focused on COVID pandemic that ranged from “Whether any member of your household tested positive for COVID-19 including any deceased person?” to “Whether any member of the household was hospitalised for treatment of COVID-19 infection?”. It also collected data about out-of-pocket expenses for treatment of survivors as well as deceased family members and source of money for the out-of-pocket expense.

When The Hindu reached out to a researcher about whether this information about COVID was collected, the answer was in the affirmative.

If this information was shared it would have given researchers an understanding of the impact of COVID pandemic ranging from the death toll to the economic impact of the disease. There has been wide divergence of information about the death toll due to COVID where the official count is 5,33,849, while other international agencies have estimated the toll to be at least four times higher than that number.

The NHFS-6 did break some new ground. “Some new questions were added e.g., migration status, COVID experience, knowledge on anaemia and hepatitis B/C, related to SHG, digital literacy, and some questions were modified or omitted as per the current situations,” informed U. V. Somayajulu, CEO and executive director of Sigma, a Delhi based social research organisation that conducted the field work in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Andaman Nicobar Islands.

There were other changes in data collection as well. “Direct questions related to HIV/AIDS were dropped and asked differently and separately for HIV and AIDS. An anemia experience question was dropped and asked about awareness. Anaemia testing was dropped from biomarker,” informs Mr. Somayajulu.

IMR and NMR details not part of NFHS-6

However, all the collected data did not make it to the factsheets. The published NFHS-5 had 131 parameters. In contrast, the NFHS-6 had only 101 parameters with 46 parameters covering children/childbirth/women. However, even here, the NFHS-6 departs from the earlier surveys by not giving details of neonatal mortality rate, infant mortality rate and under-five mortality rate that was part of the NFHS-5 data.

The foreword by Health Minister J.P. Nadda says: “As in previous rounds, the NFHS-6 estimates will help to track the performance of various flagships programmes launched by the Government of lndia in recent years.”

Sanitation data

However, NFHS-6 does not have the sanitation data that was part of the NFHS-5, though the data was collected with three questions on the subject including: “Whether you and your household members have a toilet facility that you can use?”

Another marker for which data was collected but not used is “What type of fuel does your household mainly use for cooking?” This datapoint would have shown how the fuel use has changed in Indian households driven by the flagship programme of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY). Data about adult literacy has also not made it to the NFHS-6 data sheets.

An email sent to the International Institute for Population Sciences, which carried out the study, did not evoke a response about the change in data sharing.