The government today said that measures will be taken to focus on those districts which have high maternal deaths in the country. Union Health Secretary P K Pradhan said this after releasing Annual Health Survey, AHS, of eight Empowered Action Group, EAG States and Assam. He said, survey revealed that Faizabad Mandal in Uttar Pradesh has maximum 451 maternal deaths per one lakh live births.

Mr Pradhan said that the grouping of districts were done on the basis of existing administrative divisions for finding Maternal Mortality Ratio, MMR. He also expressed concerns over sterlization.

The Secretary said that sterlization for family planning purpose is very high in females, which is over 90 per cent while males do not prefer sterlization.

While presenting survey, Census Commissioner Dr Chandramouli informed that Rajasthan tops among the marriage among females below legal age while Bihar and Jharkhand comes after it. He said that in rural areas, every 4th marriage among females in Rajasthan and every 5th in Bihar and Jharkhand take place below the legal age.

Other key highlights of the survey are – Odisha tops for the post natal and new born care which is around 75 per cent, Uttar Pradesh has reported the minimum percentage of children who are fully immunized while Uttar Khand has done maximum immunization of children aged between 12 to 23 months.

AIR Correspondent reports that Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttarpradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Assam are the 9 States which were selected for the Annual Health survey.

They were selected for the survey as they constitute around half of the population of the country. 59 per cent of births and 70 per cent of infant deaths occur in these states.