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National Health Profile of India
The National Health Profile of India (NHP) is an initiative at par with international standards of data
publications. The objective of this publication is to create a versatile database of health information
of India which is comprehensive, up‐to‐date and easily accessible to all stakeholders in the
healthcare sector. NHP provides recent trends in demography, disease profile (communicable and
non communicable/lifestyle diseases) and available health resources that define a country’s health
status. Following the standard coding from Family of International classification (FIC) in presenting
the diseases profile will improve interoperability of the data internationally. NHP provides relevant
information to the planners, policy makers, health administrators, research workers and others
engaged healthcare sector to take informed decisions. This publication will also be useful for
medical post graduates and trainees of medical and paramedical personnel and will contribute
further to the improvement of quality of health services and equitable distribution of health
resources in the country.
The research team for NHP assessed a large number of websites and publications dealing with
management of health data relevant to health status of a nation and adopted a modified structure of
six – indicators ‐ Demographic, Socio‐Economic, Health Status, Health Finance, Health Infrastructure
and Human Resource in Health Sector in order to organize and manage the health information of India.
This structure was discussed in great detail (with a range of people from senior health policy makers,
administrators to epidemiologists and anthropologists) to assess its robustness to handle data now and
afterwards and the need to include or exclude data from the existing publications. Identifying the most
appropriate data sources for the selected indicators is an on‐going research. Eventually we present the
most updated data identified from various sources and are illustrated in the new format of tables with
various combinations of parameters such as age, sex, urban, rural etc.
NHP can contribute towards providing better universal and equitable healthcare to its people as
envisaged in National Health Policy 2017 as it helps in informed decision making on policies and
initiatives of various stakeholders in healthcare sector. Nevertheless, we recognize the need for
continuous improvement of this publication to match the ever changing health needs of people
and the paradigm shifts in program implementation to achieve higher levels of effectiveness. We
envision that this structure of data organization will undergo further standardization and
enhancement of the database.