The Times of India                03.06.2013

NMC anti-feticide drive kicks off

NAGPUR: Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) teams kicked off their month long 'crash inspection drive' to check female feticide on Saturday and conducted inspections at 60 sonographycentres and 22 abortions centres in different parts of the city on first day itself. Twenty teams have been deployed for the drive. The details of which team went where and who constituted the teams have been kept confidential as per instructions of the civil surgeon.

The drive apparently went off smoothly with no untoward incident or dispute between the inspecting team and the centres. There were no faults found in records at these centres. Strangely, sources said notices would be issued to two obstetric and gynaecologists Dr Seema Khurana and Dr Urmila Naidu who were not present at the centre. No rule says the doctors can't go out of station and have to be present all the time at the centre.

District Civil Surgeon Dr Umesh Navade said that even if these two doctors were not informed, the centres cannot be running in their absence as it was illegal to run abortion centre in doctors' absence. "Though the information about conducting the crash drive came later, we had already informed organizations like the Nagpur Obstetrics and Gynaecology Society (NOGS), the Indian Radiology and Imaging Association (IRIA) and Indian Medical Association (IMA) to inform their members that the inspections could be carried out in June. Every doctor the three fields was expected to inform NMC if they were to be out of station or their centres would be closed anytime during June. On the first day itself, two doctors were not present. NMC will issue them notice," said Dr Bhavana Sonkusle, the nodal officer for the drive.

Dr Alka Mukherjee, NOGS secretary, accepted that NMC nodal officer had informed the NOGS. In turn, the organization had sent text messages to each member. "These two doctors are not our members. How can we inform them? NMC will have to devise some ways to inform the non-members too. May be some junior doctor or colleague could be running the centre. I feel every practitioner who owns the centre should avoid carrying out any MTP or sonography when they are not present to avoid mistakes in record as the data are sent online daily," she said.

IMA President Dr Warsha Dhawale told TOI that to avoid such situations every doctor should be either a member of his speciality organization or a member of IMA.