BENGALURU: Karnataka’s health department will carry out a detailed gap analysis survey to find out the exact reason behind maternal deaths in the state, and also to ensure that Maternal Mortality Rate drops below 50 per lakh live births in the next two years.
Rajkumar N, State Deputy Director (Maternal Health) told TNIE that Karnataka wants to ensure there are zero preventable deaths in the state. “The number has declined from 92 per lakh live births in 2015-17, to 83 per lakh live births in 2017-19. We know we are still the highest when compared to other southern states. In the next two years, our goal is to ensure we at least reach below 50, and go below 30 after that,” he said.
The UN has set Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with a target of 70 per 1 lakh live births, to be achieved by 2030. According to him, the health and family welfare department has looked into specific districts and identified those where maternal mortality is high, like Dharwad, Chikkaballapur, Bidar, Hassan, Haveri, Shivamogga, Tumakuru and Chamarajanagar. “The department is also aware of the Covid situation and knows there may be other districts too with high MMR. We are working round the clock to ensure deliveries happen only in institutions and in a safe manner,” he explained.
Experts point out the need to look at MMR in much more depth. Sylivia Karpagam, Public Health Doctor, in her blog pointed out that “the government needs to engage with the data and also analyse it, rather than just celebrating ups and downs. She also says that all quantitative data needs to have some qualitative backing as well as checks and balances in terms of understanding how reliable (consistent) or accurate (capturing what it was meant to capture) the data is”.
To this, Rajkumar says the effort this time will focus on analysing deaths and an audit will be done to know the reasons behind maternal deaths. “Our biggest challenge has been to make all 147 taluk hospitals functional round the clock for maternity services. We are making efforts to know why the deaths happened, geographic location, whether they belong to any particular community, if healthcare was accessible or if specialists like obstetricians, paediatricians and anesthetists were unavailable, or there was lack of transport to hospital,” he said.
Dr Sylvia said it should be mandated that private hospitals should report mortalities as well as cause of death, to ensure the data is accurate and reliable. “The state government should keep aside money for training as well as human resources to independently scrutinise all causes of death among women in the reproductive age,” she added.