India in Pursuit of Millennium Development Goals: Were the Targets Really Feasible?

J. Prachitha, Akshay Dhume and S. Subramanian
Additional contact information
J. Prachitha: TRIOs Development Support (P) Ltd., New Delhi
Akshay Dhume: School of Business Management, SVKM’S NMIMS, Bangalore Campus, Bangalore
S. Subramanian: IILM University, Gurugram, Haryana

Journal of Developing Societies, 2019, vol. 35, issue 1, 105-133

Abstract: In recent years, the Indian National Health Mission (NHM) was introduced by the Government of India as an umbrella of health programs to cover reproductive and child health, adolescent health, and selected disease control programs. These programs were given a mandate to accelerate the achievement of the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Considerable progress toward realizing the MDG objectives has been achieved, especially reductions in infant and child mortality and improvement in measles vaccination coverage (MDG Goal 4), as well as the reduction of maternal mortality and an increase in the number of births attended by skilled personnel (MDG Goal 5). Nevertheless, an overall appraisal of the status of the indicators in 2015 reveals that many of the targets remained to be achieved. The analytical issue explored here is whether the targets were too high to achieve or whether Indian health policies were flawed or too long delayed. This article offers a state-wise analysis of the achievements in health indicators relating to MDGs 4 and 5. The rate of achievement for two time periods, pre-NHM and NHM until 2015, is analyzed here. Our key finding is that most of the targets were indeed infeasible, but that lack of achievement could be attributed to delays in planning; sometimes poor execution of the policies and programs; and to the economic, social, and political disparities within the country. Better organized and more innovative approaches at the state level could improve the realization of vital MDG targets, providing improved public health for all.

Keywords: Health and development; health outcome achievements; National Health Mission of India; health-related Millennium Development Goals; health policy planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0169796X19826737 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jodeso:v:35:y:2019:i:1:p:105-133

DOI: 10.1177/0169796X19826737

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Developing Societies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().