'Silent Observer' to stem female foeticide
A new device is helping Maharashtra government identify cases of female foeticide. Information provided by this device, which is fitted to a sonography machine, is vital not only to track pregnancy tests but also to detect unreported terminations.
- The Silent Observer is a device embedded into the ultrasound machine/ Photo credit: Indian Express
With the skewed child sex ratio in the state showing few signs of improvement and female foeticide on the rise in rural areas as well, Maharashtra has turned to a gadget called the Silent Observer for help. Once fitted in sonography machines, this device maintains a log of all pregnancy tests done in a year, helping track under-reporting or false reporting of pregnancy termination cases.
Encouraged by the performance of this tamper-proof programme of recording the diagnosis by doctors in 233 sonography centres of Kolhapur in the last six months, the state health department now wants to replicate it across the state where there are 7,373 registered sonography centres.
Advocate Milind Salunkhe, legal advisor to the state government’s authority on implementing the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act, says the Silent Observer is expected to make a difference.
The child sex ratio (0-6 years) in Maharashtra is 913 females per 1,000 males. The ratio at birth, according to data until March from the state health management information systems, is 869 females per 1,000 males. A five-year awareness campaign does not seem to have had much of an impact. And of the 125 cases filed against doctors who violated provisions of the PC-PNDT Act, 92 are still pending.
On August 15 last year, the District Collector of Kolhapur - in 2001, Kolhapur registered a child sex ratio of 839 females per 1,000 males - decided to launch a website savethebabygirl.com and later floated the concept of the Silent Observer.
“Due to the dipping sex ratio, Kolhapur district received a bad name and Panhala tehsil registered the lowest child sex ratio of 795 females per 1,000 males,” said District Collector Laxmikant Deshmukh.
The online portal made it easier for the Kolhapur administration to maintain records of sonographies. The Silent Observer is a device bought by doctors for Rs 39,500 - the Collector has promised reimbursement - and embedded into the ultrasound machine used for sex determination of the foetus.
Girish Lad, CEO of Magnum Opus which helped fit the device, said it takes video inputs from the personal computer and stores them in a compressed format in a local drive - in a preconfigured video or image format. It blocks all other ports except those required for data input to ensure additional data security in the device, said Lad.
“This machine will enable the administration to provide images in black and white and use as evidence in case there has been termination of pregnancy,” said Lad.
The results have been encouraging. According to advocate Salunkhe, an Anganwadi survey done in the district showed that the child sex ratio in Kolhapur had climbed to 854 females per 1,000 males.
