INDIA: UN Criticises India's Health Policy on Women

The Indian government has come under severe criticism in a UN-sponsored study for losing its focus on broader sexual and reproductive health of women while attempting to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

"The Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12) in its 27 National Targets has a target on reduction of anaemia amongst women and girls, which has a direct bearing on maternal health and maternal mortality.

Condemning the health system, the review paper says India has lost its focus on broader sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda of expanding the package of services including safe abortion through the primary health centres (PHCs), provision of adolescent friendly services, and promotion of gender equity, in the single minded pursuit of increasing institutional deliveries.

While institutional deliveries are being equated with safe deliveries, the quality of institutional deliveries in understaffed, underequipped institutions is far from satisfactory, it said.

"While people living below poverty line are decreasing in numbers, there is no measure of the growing inequities," the paper stated.

"But this is not part of the government's report on MDGs, yet the reality in India shows that 55 per cent of the women in India are anaemic and that the number of anaemic women is increasing," the paper said.

The review paper was presented by the UN Women, in collaboration with Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in an expert committee meeting concluded on Thursday in Mexico.

Renu Khanna had presented the paper during the discussion of 'Structural and policy constraints in achieving the MDG for women and girls'. Khanna is associated with SAHAJ - Society for Health Alternatives, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan and CommonHealth (The Coalition for Maternal-Neonatal Health and Safe Abortion).

The paper states that while a state-wise disaggregation and analysis has been done of states with high and low maternal mortality rate (MMR), an analysis of the victims was not included.

"The decreasing maternal mortality ratio for India as a whole hides wide discrepancies between states and different communities in the area of maternal health. Review of the MDGs also does not look at how these women died. India does not yet have an accurate system of collecting data on maternal deaths," it said.