The National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) is a large-scale, multi-round, national-level sample survey that provides comprehensive data on population, health, and nutrition across India. It is a concept and a key data source for policy-making, not an act or a scheme. The NFHS series was initiated in the early 1990s, with the first round, NFHS-1, conducted in 1992-93, to collect reliable, high-quality data on fertility, family planning, mortality, and maternal and child health. The survey was created to provide essential data for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) to frame policies and programs, and to track progress on health indicators.
NFHS-5 covered the period 2019-2021 and is the fifth survey in the series. The MoHFW designated the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, as the nodal agency for coordination and technical guidance. The survey mechanism involved interviewing over 636,000 households, 724,000 women (aged 15-49), and 101,000 men (aged 15-54) across all 28 states and 8 Union Territories. Data was collected using four questionnaires—Household, Woman's, Man's, and Biomarker—in 19 languages using Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI).
The survey connects directly to the MoHFW and is a crucial tool for monitoring India's progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is comparable to the preceding NFHS-4 (2015-16) but includes new topics such as preschool education, disability, access to a toilet facility, death registration, and menstrual hygiene practices. A significant change in NFHS-5 was the expansion of Clinical, Anthropometric, and Biochemical (CAB) testing to include measurement of waist and hip circumferences, and the age range for blood pressure and blood glucose measurement was expanded, while HIV testing was dropped. The survey provides estimates at the national, state, and district levels for many key indicators.