Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:57:4
Nilanjana Bhowmick - AHN India Correspondent
New Delhi, India (AHN) - India is falling behind in its commitment to improve obstetric care for pregnant women, despite various programs aimed at providing free obstetric care to women in rural areas, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
"India should be a leader in protecting and monitoring women's sexual and reproductive health. Yet women continue to die entirely preventable deaths, and health authorities do not track down the reasons or do what is needed to rectify the health system," said Aruna Kashyap in a statement. She is a researcher for the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
Puja Marwaha, director of Child Rights and You (CRY) says, "Maternal health and well being is key for child rights."
The report also said that the Indian government doesn't monitor the condition of women immediately after child birth and hence is unable to prevent the deaths of women who go back home.
As Marwaha said, "The real reason of high maternal mortality is the poor investment in rural or health care infrastructure. Complicating this is the fact of early or child marriages. What we need to do is a combination of investment in rural health care from public resources and a drive to root out practices that endanger a mother's health, such as child marriages."
Most health clinics in rural India are ill-equipped and trained staff is scarce, the group says.
"Skilled birth attendance and quality of care are two sides of the same coin." Kashyap said. "Unless India can draw up a time-bound plan of action for independent certification and monitoring of public and private health facilities as 'quality care providers,' there is no guarantee that women giving birth in health facilities are receiving the skilled birth attendance needed to save them."
According to the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), almost 78,000 women die during childbirth and from associated complications in India every year.
The maternal mortality rate in India now stands at 450 per 100,000 live births. India's Millennium Development Goals is to bring it down to 109 by 2015.
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