Now, PHCs to provide safe abortion facilities in state

AURANGABAD: The state government has now decided to train medical staff in practising safe and legal abortions as stated under the limits of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act and help curb maternal mortality.
Approximately 8% women in India die due to unsafe abortions. Due to the spread of wrong messages regarding safe and legal abortion services; people are suspicious of doctors, even those performing Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTPs) under limits of the MTP Act.
This has resulted into hampering safe and legal MTP services. To overcome these lacunae, the state government organised a Comprehensive Abortion Care (CAC) training programme for medical officers of Aurangabad and Latur circle public sector in association with Ipas, an international organisation, on Thursday in Aurangabad.
“To overcome unsafe and illegal abortions, the state government organised the CAC training programme, on Thursday, for 16 medical officers of Aurangabad and Latur which comprise four districts each. The workshop was conducted at the Aurangabad Health and Family Welfare Training Centre (HFWTC), Cidco, in association with Ipas,” said Govind Chaudhary, principal, HFWTC, Aurangabad.
He said, “Training is being rendered to adopt two methods of abortions – manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) and medical methods of abortion (MMA).”
“MMA is one of the approved choices of methods of MTP which is popular among women as it does not require hospitalisation and maintains privacy,” said Arun Dhongade, programme coordinator, Ipas.
He said, “But most of the trained medical officers cannot use this method due to various reasons. Non-availability of these drugs in the state is a major cause and lack of clarity of usage is another. This pushes women towards unsafe and illegal abortions.”
“Moreover, it was observed that though some efforts were being made to train and certify medical officers in CAC, the training curriculum lacked standardisation and therefore did not ensure the requisite levels of skills and competencies. The resources invested in the MTP training were not optimally utilised. Even though the providers obtained the MTP certification, many do not initiate service provision due to lack of clinical competence and confidence. These challenges seem formidable. Hence under the Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCHA) strategic approach, focused efforts are envisaged by the government to provide CAC services and create a demand at appropriate level of public health facilities,” said Dhongade.
“To overcome this issue, Ipas in association with the government of Maharashtra has taken a step and decided to arrange four workshops one each at Aurangabad, Pune, Nagpur and Nashik for selected trained providers,” said Abhijit Sonawane, state programme manager, Ipas, Maharashtra.
“About 200 medical officers would be re-trained on the safest methods of MTP; in addition to safety and legality issues under the MTP Act,” he said.
Meanwhile, Choudhary said that the government expects that the outcome of this workshop would be that the retrained medical officers should provide safe and legal MTP services in the state; so as to reduce maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion. “The government has also directed the authorities to provide safe abortion services at all primary health centres (PHCs),” he added.