The Times of India 11.03.2013
BMC, state tussle over sonography e-data
MUMBAI: A wrangle is brewing between the BMC and the state health department
over monitoring of sonography reports. Last year, the government issued
a notification insisting on online filing of F-forms, which are to be
filed every time a sonography test is conducted on a pregnant woman. The
test is done to detect any abnormalities in the foetus, but gender
determination is banned in India.
Doctors have to file
an online copy of the F-form and also maintain its hard copy with the
patient’s and the radiologist’s signatures. India has one of the worst
child sex ratios in the world. According to the 2011 census, there are
914 girls for 1,000 boys, in Mumbai, the ratio is 917: 1,000. Officials
said in the past hard copies of F-forms had been manipulated, while it is difficult to tamper with online filing the document.
“Of the 4,293 sonography centres across Maharashtra only 2,000 have
been complying with the norms. The rest have not been submitting forms
online,” said a health department official.
“Of the defaulters
nearly 1,195 are from Mumbai. The city has 1,200 sonography centres
which means only five have been filing reports online,” he added.
The BMC, which has been monitoring the filing of F-forms, said 50,000
forms are submitted online every month. “The doctors have been filing
the forms on pcpndtmumbai.org. About three months ago, the government
informed that the forms must be filed on mahagov.in. We have informed
the government that the doctors have been trained to file on the other
website and are finding it difficult to shift to the government
website,” said a BMC official.
Dr Jignesh Thakkar, secretary of
the Indian Radiologists and Imaging Association, said doctors have been
filing F-forms online but there is no clarity on the website they must
file on. “For the mahagov.in website, many doctors are yet to receive a
login and password. When we approach the BMC we are told to continue
filing on the old website,” he said.
However, government
officials insist that the forms must be filed on its websiteLast week,
at a meeting of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques
committee it was decided that doctors would be given a month to begin
filing online.
Health minister Suresh Shetty said the health
department has been conducting training for doctors on filing the forms
online. “Currently two districts, Nashik and Kolhapur, and eight
municipal corporations are yet to begin filing online,” he said.
