Abortions to be audited to prevent female foeticide in Karnataka

All the abortions in the state have to be audited to prevent cases of female foeticide, Health and Family Welfare Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao said on Thursday.

Rao, who met the state PCPNDT Act Monitoring Committee, said, “Reason for abortion, background, medical history of patient and other details should be recorded for every abortion.” 

Randeep D, Commissioner, Health and Family Welfare, told DH: “Inspecting scanning centres and preventing the disclosure of the sex of the foetus will prevent female foeticide only to a certain extent. It is also important that we focus on the MTP centres where the actual abortions take place. We are looking at how the history and details of an abortion case can be studied to determine if these were genuine.”

The committee members have also opined that the punishment for those, involved in such illegal acts, has to be increased for it to act as a deterrent. The department will soon discuss and recommend the same to the Centre. 

The department has decided to request the Home Department to depute an ACP rank official and two other personnel to assist them during such inspections. 

SOP soon

The department will also publish a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to be followed during the inspections of the scanning centres.

Task force 

The government recently constituted a state-level task force under the leadership of the Commissioner, Health and Family Welfare Services to enforce the PCPNDT Act.