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-- Conducting sex selection abortion in India will soon become a lot more difficult.
The Union health ministry has developed a special data entry and report-generating software, which when installed in the computers of all the 28,565 registered ultrasound clinics in the country, will make it mandatory for them to fill up their Form F online.
According to the PC and PDNT Act, every sinologist is required to full Form F before conducting an ultrasound on a pregnant woman. The form has 19 questions, including the reason for conducting the sonography, along with the details of the patient and the doctor.
Every ultrasound clinic is required to submit Form F to the PNDT authorities by the 6th of every month. The clinics are supposed to keep the record of the Form F for three years.
At presents, clinics which carry our prenatal selection and selective abortion – a practice which is banned in India, leave most of the details incomplete, deliberately skipping sections mentioning the doctor's name, signature, patient's address, age of the foetus and record of previous children.
The clinics also claim to lose these documents when raids take place saying "it is difficult to store such elaborate paper work"."
Recent study conducted by gynecologist Puneet Bedi revealed that of the 18,00reistered ultrasound clinics in India, only 700 submitted their Form F to the authorities. Also, of the 50,000 forms evaluated, 80% were incomplete.
Most of the clinics claimed to have done just five scans a month, which is commercially unviable. In over 20% cases, the name of the referring doctor was missing. The survey showed that the more vital the information, the more often it was left unfilled. --
