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.