Health survey to come in six months

The National Family Health Survey III will take another six months before it is released even as NGOs allege that there is an attempt to delay the unflattering findings of the report of country's basic health services.

The Indian Institute of Population Studies in Mumbai under the health ministry has been working on the compilation of the report.

Sources in the ministry denied there was any deliberate effort to delay the report. The fact sheets of states have to be put together to bring out a national data in two volumes. It is definitely going to take another six months, a senior official in the institute has said.

"The academic work is time consuming. No other reason is there for delay," he said, when asked about the accusations of deliberate suppression.

Recently many activists led by Jean Dreze had met Congress President Sonia Gandhi seeking early release of the report. Biraj Patnaik, principal advisor to the Supreme Court Commissioners on Right to Food said the health ministry was prepared to release the report last month. "So there was no reason it needs another six months," he said.

Meanwhile, the HIV surveillance which the NFHS has undertaken for the first time, and is also the country's first population-based surveillance of HIV cases, is in its last stages.

The results of the HIV study are likely to be released in January-February 2007, sources said.