Assam hospitals, officials prepare list of teen pregnancies to nab culprits

GUWAHATI: Assam hospitals and district health authorities have started preparing lists of teenage pregnancy cases and are keeping the police in the loop to track families involved in child marriages.


According to health department sources, the police is being intimated about such registrations to nab the culprits involved in child marriages, even as special care is being taken for underage pregnant girls.

In Guwahati, hospitals have been asked to immediately intimate the police if teenagers come for pregnancy tests, especially those below 18 years, health department officials said. Sources said the strategy is to identify families involved in the marriage of these girls before they turned 18 years.

In Kamrup (Metro) district, Assam National Health Mission (NHM) has reportedly asked the district health authorities to execute the “verbal order”. “We are taking special care for teenage pregnancies. From NHM, verbal instructions have come recently to intimate the police about teenage or underage pregnancies,” said Kamrup (Metro) joint director of health services Dr Kandarpa Das.

In lower Assam’s Goalpara district, the health department is keeping a tab on parents coming for collecting birth certificates. A recent letter issued by the Goalpara joint director of health services to all registrars of birth and death registration units in the district asked them to submit the list of teenage couples who have collected birth certificates. The information has been sought on a weekly basis from January 1.

“Teenage pregnant women will get the care but now hospitals are seriously monitoring the number of such pregnancies. We have not yet issued any official order in this regard,” Assam director of health services Dr Nil Madhab Das said on Wednesday.

Kandarpa Das said his office, which monitors hospitals in the urban district, has not received any report of below 18 women coming for pregnancy tests since the crackdown was launched last week. “Probably, fearing police action, teenage pregnant women are not coming for tests in the last few days. But at the time of delivery, they must come to hospitals for the safety of the mother and the child,” Das said.

Since last week, over 2,500 arrests have been made in Assam in connection with the marriage of underage girls. Fearing arrests of their husbands and relatives, health officials said hundreds of pregnant women below 18 years have stopped coming to hospitals in the last few days. Long queues of teenage girls waiting for pregnancy and antenatal tests are no longer to be seen in many rural hospitals.