India: Health of the Nation’s states - the India state-level disease burden initiative

This report prepared as part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2016, and published in Lancet , has found that every State in India has a higher burden from non-communicable diseases and injuries than from infectious diseases.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India generate the first state-level disease burden and risk factors estimates to improve health programmes and planning for every state in India. Under-5 mortality rate is improving in every state but this rate has a 4-fold difference between states, indicating major health inequalities. Every state of India now has a higher burden from non-communicable diseases and injuries than from infectious diseases, the extent of which varies widely between the states. EAG states face the major challenge of controlling the increasing non-communicable diseases as well as the persistent infectious diseases. The per person burden from many of the leading infectious and non-communicable diseases varies 5-10 times between different states. Malnutrition continues to be the single largest risk for health loss in India, which is higher among females and is particularly severe in EAG states and Assam. Even in states at similar development levels there are major differences in the burden from specific leading diseases, indicating the need to use state-specific estimates for health planning.