NEW DELHI: A global study on a range of health indicators released today has ranked India 143rd among 188 countries, citing various challenges, including mortality rates, malaria hygiene and air pollution.
“Despite rapid economic growth, India was ranked 143rd, below Comoros and Ghana,” the first annual assessment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) health performance published in the Lancet and launched at a special event at the UN General Assembly in New York said.
India was placed just ahead of Pakistan and Bangladesh which were ranked 149th and 151st respectively.
India’s poor performance on hygiene, air pollution mortality are among factors that place it lower than countries like Bhutan, Botswana, Syria and Sri Lanka.
For malaria, which was one of the health indicators assessed, India merely scored 10 points and remained in the red. Similarly for hygiene, the study gave India just eight points while for PM2.5, it scored just 18 points.
For under-five mortality India scored 39 points while for Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) it scored 28 points.
India, however, scored above 80 points for performing well in areas like Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) which are a diverse group of communicable diseases, overweight and harmful alcohol consumption.
In 2015, the health-related SDG index was highest in Iceland, Singapore, and Sweden, with the UK ranking fifth just ahead of Finland.
The Central African Republic, Somalia, and South Sudan had the lowest values of the health-related SDG index. (AGENCIES)
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