THE STATUS OF CHILD HEALTH CARE AMONG THE TRIBAL COMMUNITIES IN ODISHA

The Tribal population constitute about 8.2 percent of the population of India .According to 2001 census the population of scheduled tribes has increased to 84.3 million from 67.8 million in 1991.With Odisha scheduled tribes of 62 tribes accounts for 22.21percnt of Odisha population. However in spite of various efforts of the government of India Odisha is lagging behind various socioeconomic factors. As a result a major number of the tribal communities suffer from various health conditions especially those who are vulnerable or backward social group live in remote hilly and forest or desert area where there is less access to education, portable water, lack of personal hygiene and sanitation making them more vulnerable to disease. They still depend upon the old traditional methods of health treatment rather practicing the modern medical health care services .The main objective of this paper is to analyse the status of child health and it makes a comparative trend analysis of the change in tribal health status in comparison to other social groups by using different rounds of NFHS data with the other communities.