Medical experts in the city say that the authorities have not employed rigorous enough measures to ensure that sonography centres offering sex determination tests do not flourish
Medical experts in the city say that the authorities have not employed rigorous enough measures to ensure that sonography centres offering sex determination tests do not flourish
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Root of all evil: Medical experts say authorities should prevent use of
sex-determination tests, the results of which are used to kill the female
foetus. Representation pic
The figures are drastically short of the national average of 913 girls and does not even compare to international standards of 952 girls. And medical experts are now pointing fingers at the government, imputing the failure to its lackadaisical approach. Not only has it failed to keep tabs on the menace, but failed to frame an effective law.u00a0
Dr Sharad Agharkhedkar, president of the Indian Medical Association, Pune said sex-selective abortions were flourishing owing to the free rein given to the sonography centres.
"Through our associations, we keep telling doctors about the law and seriousness of this situation. But the fact remains that there is hardly any inspection of these clinics and even if there is, it is on a superficial level such as checking of records like names and addresses mentioned of patients, among others. If real cases have to be found out, they (authorities) have to do surprise checks, employ decoys but none of that is happening," he said.
Giving weight to his statement is the fact that of the 29-odd cases registered by the PMC against medical practitioners for flouting norms of the Pre-conception Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique Act (PCPNDT), none of them found the doctors guilty of sex-selective tests -- but statistics tell a different story, say the experts. They were just found to be guilty of non-maintenance of records, minor faults like not displaying boards, among others.
Further proof to this fact is that in the seven years since the Act was implemented, the PMC were not able to employ a single decoy or a pregnant woman to expose sex determination clinics, despite offering a cash incentive of Rs 15,000 for a days work.
Dr Sanjay Gupte, president of Federation of Gynaecological Society of India (FOGSI) which has more than 28,000 doctors as members, said that the local bodies need to employ more staff dedicated to this purpose, if they want to curb this problem.
Currently, the PMC has 14 medical officers to look after over 420 sonography centres."These medical officers have to look after all aspects of health in the entire ward and don't have the time to conduct inspections at all centres. Naturally, there is some fault in this system or the sex ratios wouldn't plunge so badly.
We need to form a specialised task force at corporation level that will do this job on a daily basis and centres should be aware of their presence. Only if people conducting such sex determination tests are scared of the repercussions of flouting the law, will this menace stop," said Gupte. He said that the PCPNDT committee at the district level, which he is a part of, discussed this move at its meeting 15 days ago.u00a0
The Other Side
Dr Vaishali Jadhav, assistant health officer in charge of PCPNDT, PMC said that officers were conducting regular checks on sonography centres. "The figures at the PMC level have shown a consistent improvement. We have divided the centres between all medical officers. Each one has to visit about 10 centres to every month. Our records show that this is being done," she said.
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