Steps to curb maternal mortality rate failed

Visakhapatnam: Though the government is claiming that measures are being taken to check the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) and Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), both mother and infant deaths are not being controlled in the district. The district administration already identified high risk pregnancies and special drives also taken up to check the MMR and IMR.

However, during the past two months (December 2017 and January 2018) as many as 12 mothers died. In fact, all these years, more number of death cases were reported in the agency area and now the deaths cases were being reported in the urban and rural areas also.

The authorities found that due to lack of nutritious food and health care, the pregnant women are facing a lot of problems during delivery. The pregnant women are also facing health issues with less hemoglobin levels in the body.

“We are surprised that Visakhapatnam district, which stood in number one position in all parameters in the state, has now failed to control MMR and IMR.

According to the government announcement and district administration statistics, there are several welfare programmes, including supply of nutritious food to the pregnant women is being implemented, but still MMR and IMR statistics revealing that there are not yielding good results,” President of She Association of India M Sree Devi lamented.

As a part of promotional activities to increase the institutional deliveries, the government is providing free transport to hospitals and dropping at home after discharge and also giving cash incentive of Rs 3,000 to the pregnant women.

There are loopholes in the administration. The higher officials are not receiving the ground level reports particularly in the rural and agency areas. The government should fix responsibility at all the level to check the MMR and IMR, Sree Devi demanded.

According to district medical and health officer Dr Ramesh, death of four women were reported in rural, agency and urban areas during last December and January.

Responding on the issue, Collector Pravin Kumar directed the medical and health officers to conduct special training camp to alert the ground level staff involving the sarpanch of the respective gram panchayat.

In order to check the MMR and IMR, Pravin Kumar directed the medical officers to send all the pregnant women particularly high-risk persons to the King George Hospital for an advanced and quality medical care.