01 July,2011 06:27 AM IST | | Alifiya Khan
Special squads, pregnancy registry, ban on mobile sonography machines some of the measures to be introduced by civic and state agencies to curb malpractice
| Keeping track: The Pune Municipal Corporation plans to maintain a register of all pregnancies in the city, and has already begun the exercise in slum areas. representation pic |
"This exercise will take place within 15 days. Initially, it will start from municipal hospitals and clinics and then spread to private maternity homes and hospitals," Pathak said. Dr Anjali Sabne, head of PMC's family welfare bureau, said that the process of collecting data of pregnant women was already underway. "Right now, we do so in the slum areas only. Once we get the go ahead, we will devise a plan to collect information from the urban areas as well," she said. Besides its plan to keep track of pregnant woman, the health department will devise a foolproof strategy to crack down on illegal ultrasounds.
Dr Vaishali Jadhav, assistant health officer (Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques), PMC said that she has been directed to come up with a detailed action plan on a few proposals. "I have been told that the department wants to start flying squads consisting of health officers who will raid sonography clinics. This move has to start immediately and we are in the process of preparing a plan on how, when and in what manner we will conduct the raids," Jadhav said. "Secondly, the PMC plans to install sonography machines at their own hospitals and clinics in a bid to stop foeticide. If this facility is available at a nominal cost here, then we can hope that few people would go to private facility and the practice of sex determination tests can be stopped."
Besides, the PMC is also contemplating installing CCTV cameras at sonography centres to monitor patients.
Not to be left behind, the state department too has stepped up surveillance. In the last 11 days, 2,738 sonography machines at 1,071 sonography clinics across the state have been inspected. Of these, 158 have been sealed, most of which were from the Beed district. Of these 14 machines were sealed in the Pune district, nine of them within the PMC limits and five from Pimpri-Chinchwad.
Dr Suresh Gupta, additional director of family welfare department, said that meetings were being held at the ministry level to crackdown on illegal abortion centres. "We are contemplating a ban on mobile sonography machines. Though these machines have been getting permissions and registrations so far, their usage and numbers have risen dramatically in the last few years. It is not possible to keep a strict check on them," he said.
(Part I of a series on female foeticide prevention)
