COIMBATORE: The Health Department has instructed ultrasound scan centres to remove images of gods, flowers, etc., from the walls of the scanning rooms, as these pictures are being used to reveal the sex of the foetus. There is however no formal government order to remove the images.
The department has received complaints that a few scan centres practice using images to communicate the sex of the foetus to the mother or the family, said an official of the Tamil Nadu Medical and Rural Health Services.
Unlike in rural areas, doctors in some urban pockets are hesitant to openly reveal the sex of the foetus. Hence, in a covert manner, they point to portraits of gods or flowers in the rooms to indicate the sex of the fetus, the official who requested anonymity, added. Paintings of certain flowers, particularly roses, are used to indicate a female foetus.
To eliminate such devious ways of communication, during routine inspections of ultrasound scan centres, officials instruct them to remove all visible representation portraits and wall paintings present inside scanning rooms.
The centres can, however, use these portraits outside these rooms.
Only three mandatory awareness boards are allowed inside the scanning room. One of these warns patients and persons accompanying them against using foetal sex-determination techniques. Another warns the scan centre in Tamil, while the third, in English, is a general warning against violation of these rules. No other visual representations are allowed in the scanning room, the official said.
Use of sex selection techniques before or after conception is banned according to the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act 1994. The government has also banned the use of pre-natal diagnostic techniques for sex-selective abortion.
Ultrasound scan centres play a major role in identifying the sex of the foetus and its elimination if it is not of the desired sex. The PCPNDT Act has banned all laboratories, clinics and scan centres from conducting any test, including ultrasonography, for foetal sex determination.
No person from such centres, including the authorised doctor who conducts the procedure, is allowed to communicate the sex of the foetus to pregnant women or their relatives by words, signs of any other method according to the PCPNDT Act.
In an explanation given by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to Section 22 of the Act, any person who puts an advertisement for pre-natal and pre-conception sex determination facilities in the form of notice, circular, label, wrapper or any document, or advertises through interior or other media in electronic or print form or engages in any visible representation made by means of hoarding, wall painting, signal, light, sound, smoke or gas, can be imprisoned for up to three years and fined `10,000.