Annual Health Survey (AHS) unit level data now available on OGD Platform

May 19, 2016

Author: Shubhadip Biswas

Decentralized district-based health planning is essential in India because of the large inter-district variations. Realizing the need for preparing a comprehensive district health profile on key parameters based on a community set up, the Annual Health Survey (AHS) has been designed to yield benchmarks of core vital and health indicators at the district level; prevalence of disabilities, injuries, acute and chronic illness and access to health care for identified morbidities; and access to maternal, child health and family planning services. By virtue of being a panel survey, AHS  enables better capturing of the health seeking behavior of the public as compared to other periodic cross-sectional surveys, and also helps to formulate right strategies. The objective of Annual Health Survey (AHS) is to monitor the performance and outcome of various health interventions of the Government including those under National Health Mission (NHM) at closer intervals through the benchmark indicators.

 The sample size at the district level has been derived taking Infant Mortality Rate as the decisive indicator and host of other practical issues related to execution of the survey. Keeping in view the mammoth size of the sample, it was a conscious decision of the Government to initially confine the survey to the 284 districts (as per 2001 Census) of the 8 Empowered Action Group States (Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Rajasthan) and Assam for a three year period starting from 2010-11. These 9 high focus States with relatively high fertility and mortality account for about 48 percent of the total population in the country. During the Base line Survey in 2010-11, a total of 20.1 million population and 4.14 million households and during the first updation survey in 2012-13, 20.61 million population and 4.28 million households have actually been covered. The second updation survey (third and final round) covered a total of 20.94 million population and 4.32 million households in 2012-13. Despite being restricted to 9 States, the AHS is the largest demographic survey in the world and covers two and a half times that of the Sample Registration System.

The Second updation survey in all the nine AHS States was carried out with four Schedules. These are: (i) House-listing Schedule, (ii) Household Schedule, (iii) Woman Schedule and (iv) Mortality Schedule.

To supplement the information provided by Annual Health Survey (AHS), a biomarker component has been introduced in AHS to collect data on nutritional status, life style diseases like diabetes & hypertension and anemia in Empowered Action Group (EAG) States & Assam. This component, namely Clinical, Anthropometric and Bio-chemical (CAB) survey, is conducted in 2014 on a sub-sample of AHS in all EAG States namely Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand & Uttar Pradesh and Assam.

• In the House-listing Schedule, the mapping, listing and some key particulars like type and ownership details collected in the first updation survey in 2012-13 were updated for the existing houses and households and recorded afresh for the new houses and households in the second updation round. House-listing and Household schedule contains information of various Indicators viz. whether usual resident, date/month/year of birth, age, religion, social group, marital status, date/month/year of first marriage, attending school, not-attending school, highest educational qualification attained, occupation / activity status during last 365 days, whether having any form of disability, type of treatment for injury, type of illness, source of treatment, symptoms pertaining to illness persisting for more than one month, sought medical care, various diagononsis, source of diagnosis, getting regular treatment, person chews/smoke/consume alcohol, status of house, type of structure of the house, ownership status of the house, source of drinking water, does the household treat the water in any way to make it safer to drink, toilet facility, household with electricity, main source of lighting, main source of fuel used for cooking, number of dwelling rooms, availability of kitchen, possess radio/ transistor/ television/ computer/ laptop/ telephone/ mobile phone/ washing machine/ refrigerator/ sewing machine/ bicycle/ motor/ scooter/ moped/ car/ jeep/ van/ tractor/ water pump/ tube well/ cart, land possessed, residential status, covered by any health scheme or health insurance, status of household etc.

• Woman Schedule mainly comprised two sections. Section I contains information relating to the outcome of pregnancy(s) (live birth/still birth/abortion); birth history; type of medical attention at delivery; details of maternal health care(ante-natal/natal/post-natal); immunization of children; breast feeding practices including supplements; occurrence of child diseases (Pneumonia, Diarrhea and fever); registration of births, etc. and these details were collected from all Ever Married Women (EMW) aged 15-49 years. Section II focused on information on pregnancy; use, sources and practices of family planning methods; details relating to future use of contraceptives and unmet need; awareness about RTI/STI, HIV/AIDS, administration of HAF/ORT/ORS during diarrhea and danger signs of ARI/Pneumonia; and these details were collected from all Currently Married Women aged 15-49 years. Woman Schedule also includes more information relating the Ever Married Women (EMW) like conception details, usage of NPT kit, registration of pregnancy, health problems and subsequent treatments during ante-natal/natal/post-natal period, cost incurred by the woman during delivery etc.

• Through the  Mortality  Schedule,  details  relating  to  death  occurred  to  usual residents of sample household were captured and it includes information on name & sex of deceased, date of death, age at death, registration of death and source of medical attention received before death. For infant deaths, data related to symptoms preceding death is also provided. Mortality Schedule also includes information on various determinants of maternal mortality viz. case of deaths associated with pregnancy, information on factors leading/ contributing to death, symptoms preceding death, time between onset of complications and death, etc.

• Clinical, Anthropometric and Bio-chemical (CAB) survey has collected information on nutritional status of women, children (1 month and above) and men, prevalence of anemia among women, children (6 month and above) and men, prevalence of hypertension and abnormal fasting blood glucose among women and men 18 years and above and utilization of iodized salt in households.   Stunting (Height for age), Wasting (Weight for height), Underweight (Weight for age) and under nourished (BMI for age) are the four major indicators available for measuring malnutrition level in children under 5 years. For children in the age 5 to18 years, under nourishment data is provided and for persons 18 years and above, data on BMI indicators (<18.5,≥25 and ≥30) is provided separately for male female and rural also. Information of Anemia, measured by Hemoglobin level, is available for sex wise children, women and men. For children, the data is available for age 6-59 months, 5-9 years, and 10-17 years. Adult anemia is categorized for age 18-59 years and 60 and above. Data related to Blood sugar and Hypertension level are provided for person age 18 and above only.

Follow the link below to avail the unit level datasets of Combined Household Houselist information and Clinical, Anthropometric and Bio-chemical (CAB) survey at Open Government Data Platform India.