+7.3 ptsImproving
2023–24Change on previous periodKerala
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Maternal and childMulti-yearNational Family Health Survey
Percentage of women with a live birth in the 5 years before the survey who had at least four antenatal care visits for their last birth.
+7.3% (+9%) from 81.3% in 2019–21. A move in the better direction.
Provisional figure
| Period | Kerala | India | Status | Where in the document |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023–24 | 88.6% | 65.2% | Provisional | NFHS-6 State/UT fact sheets, PDF p.75, "Kerala - Key Indicators", indicator 30 "Mothers who had at least 4 antenatal care visits (%)", column NFHS-6 (2023-24) Total |
| 2019–21 | 81.3% | 58.5% | Reported | NFHS-6 State/UT fact sheets, PDF p.75, "Kerala - Key Indicators", indicator 30 "Mothers who had at least 4 antenatal care visits (%)", column NFHS-5 (2019-21) Total; the publisher's restatement of NFHS-5 printed on the NFHS-6 sheet |
Percentage of women with a live birth in the 5 years before the survey who had at least four antenatal care visits for their last birth.
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a household sample survey run by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. NFHS-6 interviewed 679,238 households, 716,397 women and 100,977 men in two fieldwork phases (28 May 2023 – 26 Feb 2024 and 7 Feb 2024 – 31 Dec 2024), using a two-stage sample designed for national, State/UT and district estimates, with height, weight, blood pressure and random blood glucose measured by trained health investigators. Every value is a weighted survey estimate, a percentage of the stated population group, not a count of services. NFHS-6 indicator 30, 'Mothers who had at least 4 antenatal care visits (%)', in the section 'Antenatal Care (for last birth in the 5 years before the survey)'. Reported by the mother. Source: NFHS-6 fact sheet compendium, '<Place> - Key Indicators', indicator 30: the 'NFHS-6 (2023-24) Total' column for the 2023-2024 value and the 'NFHS-5 (2019-21) Total' column for the 2019-2021 value. The NFHS-5 figure is the publisher's own restatement printed on the NFHS-6 sheet (the original NFHS-5 State fact sheets are now behind a login on nfhsiips.in), and is cited as such. IHO stores totals only; the urban and rural NFHS-6 columns are not stored. Periods are stored as the national fieldwork windows: 2023-2024 (1 May 2023 – 31 Dec 2024) and 2019-2021 (17 Jun 2019 – 30 Apr 2021). Each State/UT was surveyed over a shorter stretch inside the NFHS-6 window (Appendix 2 of the compendium gives the dates; Kerala, for example, 4 Jul – 23 Dec 2023).
WHO now recommends at least eight antenatal contacts; four is India's programme norm. Recall of the number of visits is approximate. A survey estimate carries sampling error: IIPS publishes relative standard errors for India only (Appendix 1), so small differences between States, or between rounds for a small State or UT, may not be real. The NFHS-6 fact sheets are provisional ('The results presented in the NFHS-6 Fact Sheets are provisional'); IIPS's final reports may revise them, and IHO records any change as a revision. Values the fact sheet prints in brackets rest on 25–49 unweighted cases and are stored as low-sample (shown with a warning, never scored); values it suppresses with '*' (fewer than 25 cases) are not stored. Manipur was not surveyed in NFHS-6, so it has no 2023-2024 value, and IHO does not carry its NFHS-5 value forward.
No value in this series has been revised since the observatory first archived it.
India Health Observatory (2026). Mothers with at least four antenatal care visits, Kerala, 2019–21 to 2023–24 [dataset]. Original data: International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Family Health Survey. https://indiahealthobservatory.com/india/kerala/antenatal-care-4-visits
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2 periods. Values exactly as published; nothing interpolated.
Not the same measure as HMIS 'ANC four-plus check-ups ratio', which is computed from facility reports. NFHS-6 prints its NFHS-5 value against the same indicator wording and footnotes, and the wording of this indicator did not change between the rounds. One design change affects every indicator: NFHS-6 selected urban first-stage units from the Urban Frame Survey blocks (2012-17) instead of Census enumeration blocks. Geography is the post-2020 map in both rounds (Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh separate; Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu merged). Not comparable with HMIS figures for similarly named services, which count facility reports rather than surveying households.
How signals are computed from this series: methodology.