Pilot project to ensure institutional deliveries,reduce maternal deaths

Health officials have taken up a pilot project at taluka places to identify areas with less number of institutional deliveries to bring down maternal deaths. “We will identify pregnant women who are at high risk and provide interventions,” says Dr Uddhav Gawhande,deputy director of health,Pune circle,who has returned from Sweden after a month-long training as part of a global project to save mothers.

The maternal mortality rate (MMR) is 250-300 per lakh live births in India and 130 in Maharashtra. Gawhande said India would have to bring it down to 109 per lakh live births by 2015 according to the UN’s Millennium Development Goal target (or,in other words,reduce MMR by three quarters between 1990 and 2015).

At least 50 of the 1,254 maternal deaths in the state last year were from Pune division while the tribal areas of the state also figured high on the list. The deaths mainly occur owing to delay in treatment and lack of transport facilities,specially in rural areas,to reach hospitals. Dr Sanjay Gupte,convenor of Save the Mother and Newborn programme of the Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecological Society of India (FOGSI) said they would work with the government as a private initiative to reach out to pregnant women in the peripheral areas.

Pandharpur,Solapur and Purandar talukas have been identified to upgrade the transport facilities and implement steps to ensure the maximum number of insitutional deliveries.

Dr Mohan Nagare,chairperson of the maternal mortality audit committee in Pune,told Newsline that the initiative had been launched to track each pregnant women and check whether she was provided ante natal care. “Often,women who stay in city areas go back to their maternal homes in rural places for deliveries. They do not continue with the same doctor. There is a likelihood of complications taking place in rural areas and time is often lost in transporting these women back to the city in an emergency… Projects are being taken up to ensure that the nurse in charge of the ante-natal care for 10,000 population can keep track of the pregnant women who travel out of town during the last quarter of their pregnancies.