Representative image of a survey.
Credit: Pixabay Photo
Bengaluru: The state-level mapping and listing of households across 15 districts in South Karnataka under the National Family Health Survey-6 is nearly complete, with Chitradurga likely to be covered by December 10.
This will make way for the main survey to begin in February, providing extensive updated information regarding the demographics and health of the population in Karnataka in 2023-24.
The NFHS-6 survey is being conducted in two phases, with Karnataka being among the 18 states and union territories being surveyed in the second phase.
In Karnataka, the 15 southern districts are under the purview of the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru, headed by Dr C M Lakshmana, Project Director, NFHS-6 South Karnataka, and professor, Population Research Centre, ISEC.
Currently, the core team that is heading the survey in South Karnataka, which includes a demographer, a health coordinator, and an IT coordinator, besides Dr Lakshmana, is attending a training of trainers (ToT) conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, at Varanasi.
“The training is expected to conclude by December 18, following which the core team will translate the four standard questionnaires – household, men’s, women’s, and biomarker – and recruit nearly 125 field investigators in a month for the main survey,” he said.
Dr Lakshmana explained that over one week in September, ISEC trained 80 mappers to conduct the preliminary state-level mapping and listing across a total of 660 primary sampling units (PSUs) across 15 districts in South Karnataka (44 PSUs per district).
Since September 20, mappers have conducted the mapping and listing activity of all households in the 44 PSUs in each district with the assistance of local ASHA workers.
Once this data is submitted to IIPS, it will identify at least 22 sample households within each PSU, two of which are buffer samples, and submit them to ISEC to conduct the main survey. This will amount to 880 households in each of the districts — a total of 13,200 households across 15 districts.
This sampling and mapping occurred in phases, with Kolar, Chikkaballapur, Tumakuru and Ramanagara in phase 1; Chamarajanagar, Mandya, Bengaluru Rural and Bengaluru Urban in phase 2; Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Hassan, and Chikkamagaluru in phase 3; and the ongoing phase 4 covering Mysuru, Kodagu and Chitradurga by December 10.
He added that for the main survey, a team of seven people comprising one supervisor, two health investigators, one male and three female investigators will visit 12 households every day, and 15 such teams will simultaneously cover over 13,200 households across 15 districts within 3 months.
The previous survey, NFHS-5, was conducted in 2019-20 and was published in March 2021. Among the many statewide indicators, the survey showed that, compared to NFHS-4 (2015-16), the sex ratio increased to 1,035 females from 979 females per 1,000 males in five years. There was also a significant increase in the percentage of children aged between 12 to 23 months being fully vaccinated (based on information from the vaccination card), from 72 per cent in NFHS-4 to 88.3 per cent in the NFHS-5.