Officials say that the city’s rising graph is an indicator of a better reporting mechanism put in place two years ago.
While the state has registered the steepest fall in Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) and achieved the target of the Millennium Development Goals (Goal 5) of the United Nations (UN), Mumbai has been seeing a rising number of maternal mortality deaths in the last few years. Officials say that the city’s rising graph is an indicator of a better reporting mechanism put in place two years ago.
Dr Asha Advani, special officer, family welfare department, said, “We now have a healthier and more transparent system for recording deaths. The earlier system left out deaths occurring in homes and private nursing homes.”
The state’s MMR of 104 (per 1 lakh live births) falls within the UN’s millennium development goal for MMR which stands at 109. Meanwhile, according to figures available with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in 2010, Mumbai reported 206 maternal deaths, of which about 125 were from Mumbai while 81 women who died in city hospitals were transferred from rural areas.
The district level committee, headed by the executive health officer of the BMC, was formed last year under the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) programme which aims to reduce maternal and neo-natal mortality rates. “Anaemia has topped the cause of deaths. We are training doctors for better diagnoses,” said Dr Advani.
The committee had last year sent circulars to hospital asking them to register maternal deaths. With the state government’s government regulation (GR), hospitals now also have to set up their own committee to look into maternal deaths.
“Any hospital, including private hospitals, registering more than 500 births in a year, should have its own committee that sends a review on maternal deaths every month. They also have to send a detailed report of a maternal death within 24 hours of its occurance and the report must include the deceased’s case papers too. Our aim is to improve the quality of care for new mothers,” added Dr Advani.
According to the GR last year, the committee should include a gynaecologist, anaesthetist, general physician, nodal officer and a nursing staff member.
Dr Ashok Anand, professor, gynaecology department of JJ hospital, said, “The union government has started maintaining a maternal mortality review. We have been instructed to not only register maternal mortality cases in hospitals but also within the community. So, mothers who die within six weeks of childbirth will also be counted in MMR.”
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