The issues pertaining to adverse maternal mortality rate (MMR) and infant mortality rate (IMR) in West Godavari district left Collector Bhaskar Katamneni perplexed at a review meeting on Thursday, with the medical officers from the Department of Medical and Health confining their explanations to jargons.
The Collector wanted medical officers manning Primary Health Centres and area hospitals to get to the root cause for the spurt in IMR and MMR, despite sustained interventions by the government to improve the indicators. But the latter appeared to have guarded themselves with explanations loaded with medical jargons to the utter displeasure of Mr. Bhaskar.
Quoting official data, the Collector said as many as 60 infants and 10 pregnant women had died soon after delivery in a month in the district, warranting a brainstorming session by officials to address the issue. It was the third meeting the Collector had convened with health officials to diagnose the factors behind the adverse IMR and MMR and evolve strategies to curb it.
Terming this a ‘systemic failure’ of the Medical and Health Department, the Collector pointed out that there was no follow-up action from doctors in many of caesarean cases. “Pregnant women and infants are losing lives due to non-availability of doctors in the respective PHCs,” Mr. Bhaskar said.
With the personnel at some PHCs referring women in pre and post-caesarean conditions to the hospitals at far-off places like Rajahmundry and Kakinada had led to death of patients in many cases, the Collector pointed out. A section of medical officers differed with the Collector, when he said that poverty caused anaemia in some pregnant women who died after delivery, adding that low birth weight of newborns had substantially contributed to adverse IMR.
“Some women wilfully refuse to take nutritional food during pregnancy so as to avoid their newborns to be overfed, thereby complicating deliveries,” officials said.
