Health Status of Schedule Tribes in Jharkhand

The Scheduled tribes are one of the major social groups in Jharkhand that give the state a distinct identity. Yet, the tribal community is the most economically backward and vulnerable population in the state. Their backwardness is further compounded by their poor health status. Health is one of the important indicators of social development. Specially, women's health is essential to their development and the advancement of society as a whole. The paper discusses the health and nutritional status of the schedule tribes specially the tribal women of Jharkhand state using body mass index, prevalence of anaemia and hypertension, health problems and other variables. The secondary data has used to analyse the health status of the tribal women mainly collected from National family Health survey (2019-21) of Jharkhand. The finding of the study reflects that there is a high prevalence of nutritional deficiency among tribal women. The prevalence of anaemia among tribal women is almost double as compared to male tribes. Prevalence of hypertension among female tribes is 9.5% and among male tribes is 14.7%, which is also a highly concerning situation. Diabetes, asthma, thyroid, heart disease, cancer and many other severe health problems are rapidly increasing among the tribal population in Jharkhand state. Although as per the data provided by NFHS, 2019-21, there are less numbers of tribal women suffering from health issues except cancer in comparison to number of total female population. The possible reasons behind the smaller number of tribal women with health problems can be their different custom and traditional belief, dependency on natural resources to get proper nutrition, their traditional skills for health care, Or the reason for this could also be that there is a lack of knowledge and awareness regarding health problems among the tribal population and the tests related to health problems are also less among them due to their inadequate access to modern health care system.