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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Audit boost to mothers’ health by Santosh K Kiro

Audit boost to mothers’ health by Santosh K Kiro

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published Published on Mar 27, 2010   modified Modified on Mar 27, 2010


Jharkhand has decided to seriously monitor deaths of mothers, during child delivery or as a result of extraneous circumstances, having woken up to its dismal health record that is nowhere near the UN’s millennium goals.

Jharkhand’s maternal mortality rate or MMR — the number of maternal deaths per one lakh live births in a year — stands at 371, while the national average is 312. But as a signatory to the UN Millennium Development Goal, India is committed to bringing down its MMR to 104 (one-third of 312) in 15 years from 2000 to 2015.

This means Jharkhand will have to scale down its MMR to 123 by 2015. As a result, the state government has planned a system of extensive maternal death audit or MDA, which will help pinpoint accurately the exact cause of, and the circumstances that led to, the death of a mother.

And once the cause is identified, health officials believe, addressing it will help reduce MMR.

“As per the MDA system, a health department employee of the local primary health centre (PHC), along with the sahiya (village level health volunteer) and health worker, will visit the family of the deceased mother and find out the cause and circumstances that led to her death,” explained Nitin Madan Kulkarni, special secretary, health department.

The PHCs would have to carry out this exercise within 21 days of a mother’s death, he said, adding the system would be enforced across the state in a week.

MDA has been in place in Tamil Nadu since 1994 when the state’s MMR was 380. Today it is 90.

Jharkhand has had a system of recording maternal deaths, but medical officers weren’t particular about mentioning the cause of death because it wasn’t mandatory. As a result, the administration rarely paid attention to the “non-medical” causes of such deaths.

Among such common causes were, say, the lack of transportation to take a pregnant woman to the nearest PHC, failure of a doctor to attend to a pregnant woman in time, etc

For Jharkhand, these were the most common reasons behind its high MMR.

Under the National Rural Health Mission, each PHC is allotted Rs 10,000 per year to be spent on referrals, and making arrangements to take expecting mothers to a nearby hospital for emergency care.

But a majority of the funds remained unutilised due to apathetic medical officers.

“Fixing these non-medical causes will help us improve the scenario drastically. The MDA will make it mandatory for medical officers at PHCs to provide the exact reason behind the death of a pregnant woman,” Kulkarni said.

The health department is in the process of issuing a government order to all DCs and the district civil surgeons, asking them to ensure the implementation of MDA.

The order, Kulkarni said, would be issued in a week.


The Telegraph, 28 March, 2010, http://telegraphindia.com/1100328/jsp/frontpage/story_12272535.jsp
 

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