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हिन्दी — Read in HindiNon communicable diseases, nutrition and food safety
Diseases that are not caught from others, nutrition and food safety: cancers, diabetes, heart disease, inherited blood disorders, diseases carried in drinking water such as fluorosis, fortification, food labelling and tobacco. Prelims has asked about fluoride among the pollutants in India's drinking water.
Showing 2 of 6 articles, those that changed from 1 to 31 July 2026.Show all
National Family Health Survey 6
Copy link to National Family Health Survey 6Prelims and Mains
The National Family Health Survey is India's periodic household survey of health, nutrition and fertility; the sixth round covers 2023 to 24.
NFHS 5 and NFHS 6
| NFHS 5 | NFHS 6 (2023 to 2024) | |
|---|---|---|
| Indicators | 131 | 101 |
| Anaemia and haemoglobin | measured, from finger or heel prick blood | dropped |
| Mortality, sex ratio, sanitation, clean fuel, registration | reported | dropped |
| Malaria testing | measured, from dried blood spots | dropped |
| Non communicable disease biomarkers | measured | some kept |
| External support | technical and financial support from outside, including the Demographic and Health Surveys Programme | none: run by the International Institute for Population Sciences alone |
What changed
24 Jul 2026
- Institutional deliveries rose to 90.6 per cent and full immunisation of children aged 12 to 23 months to 87.1 per cent.
- Stunting among children under five fell to 29.3 per cent.
- Against this, 30.7 per cent of women and 27.3 per cent of men aged 15 to 49 are now overweight or obese.
Mains: India now carries a double burden of undernutrition and metabolic disease.
PIB, 24 Jul 2026: NFHS-6 Highlights Rising lifestyle diseases among Adults (opens in a new tab)
Show history (1 other update)
23 Jun 2026
- The factsheets came about two years after fieldwork ended.
- They cover fewer indicators than NFHS 5, and the International Institute for Population Sciences ran the survey for the first time without external technical or financial support.
- The total fertility rate held at 2.0.
Mains: The omissions remove the evidence needed to judge Anaemia Mukt Bharat, Poshan Abhiyaan, Swachh Bharat and Ujjwala, and the Sample Registration System cannot substitute because it is only a sample survey.
Frontline, 23 Jun 2026: What NFHS-6 doesn't tell us (opens in a new tab)
Cancer
Cancer: notification and the global count
Copy link to Cancer: notification and the global countPrelims and Mains
Making cancer a notifiable disease obliges doctors and hospitals to report every case to the State.
- Notification fills the gap left by cancer registries that cover only about 10 to 16 per cent of the population.
- The Centre holds that notification is meant for communicable diseases.
- The World Health Organization's Global Status Report on Cancer gives the global count and shows the survival gap between rich and poor countries.
What changed
8 Jul 2026New
- Telangana became the seventeenth State to make cancer notifiable.
- The WHO report estimates about 20.6 million new cases and close to 10 million deaths a year, rising to about 35 million cases by 2050.
- Five year survival from breast cancer is about 87 per cent in high income countries against about 42 per cent in low income countries.
Mains: the survival gap is largely a matter of price and access, which is the case for using compulsory licensing.
The Hindu, 4 Jul 2026: Counting cancer (opens in a new tab) · The Hindu, 8 Jul 2026 · The Indian Express, 20 Jul 2026: WHO's Global Status Report on Cancer puts the inequity in survival, not in incidence (opens in a new tab)