Even as the state government claims to have successfully brought down maternal and infant mortality rates after the implementation of the Chiranjeevi scheme, a survey by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) reveals under reporting of such deaths and faulty registration.

Titled Saving mothers and newborns through an innovative partnership with private sector obstetricians: Chiranjeevi Scheme of Gujarat, India’, the report calls for a foolproof system in place for detailed registration of maternal and infant mortality in Gujarat.

“The Chiranjeevi scheme has been fairly successful and there is evidence of substantial reduction in mortality rate in the state with easy access to obstetricians in the rural areas. But there are instances when deaths are not recorded by the doctors, which make it difficult to get a clear picture of the scheme’s impact. There is a need for better recording of maternal and neonatal deaths,” said project researcher, IIM-A Prof Dileep Mavalankar.

The study is a compilation of the state’s mortality reports prepared by the government from January 2006 to December 2008, tallied with the mortality report of the Registrar General of India (RGI).

As per the analysis, only 52 maternal deaths were reported, as against 588 deaths out of 2,69,942 deliveries in the absence of the Chiranjeevi scheme.

On the same lines, only 1,061 neonatal deaths were reported as against 10,798 deaths among 2,69,942 deliveries consideraing a Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) of 40, the data revealed.

“We had taken a special survey conducted by RGI as the base which calculated MMR of 202 in 1999-2001 and 172 in the 2001-03 survey. According to this we estimated MMR in 2007 to be around 97. Presuming that the MMR among the poor is 1.5 times more than the average mortality, we assume that the present MMR should have been around 218 instead of 52 as reported,” said Mavalankar.

... contd.