Daily Times

LAHORE: The Punjab Health Department executive district officers (EDOs) face the allegations of forgery, as the maternal deliveries data provided by them to the officials was proven false and fake when compared with the actual data.

Initially, the EDOs of ten districts fraudulently increased their deliveries data from 7 to 451 percent in order to conceal their incompetence and to show their ‘good performance’. Supervisory management system from top to bottom has exposed the performance of these health managers.

According to well informed source in Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department, maternal mortality remains to be a persistent issue in Punjab where 270 out of 100,000 women lose their lives either due to pregnancy complications or during childbirth. Punjab, being the largest province, houses 56 percent of the total population of the country while overall situation here is said to be deplorable, as the government hospitals in rural areas lack delivery and labour room facilities.

Punjab has also failed to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce maternal and newborn deaths, as more than 41 percent of births in Punjab are handled by unskilled birth attendants.

After the failure of existing system, the Punjab chief minister has upgraded 650 basic health units (BHUs) across the province. These BHUs would remain operational 24/7 to provide best maternity medical facilities to women living in underdeveloped districts for emergency obstetric and newborn care.

The source said these BHUs have been reporting their data to main dashboard developed by the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) of Integrated Reproductive Maternal Newborn, Child Health and Nutrition Programme (IRMNCP) through their respective EDOs health and concerned district coordinator on daily basis.

Performance of ten districts surprisingly witnessed improvement, raising the eyebrows of officials who took the decision to conduct a third party audit through monitoring and evaluation assistants (MEAs), he said, adding that officials of Punjab Directorate General Health Services (DGHS) visited 224 BHUs in ten districts and found major disparity in reports of official data for the month of May.

He said the audit team visited 18 BHUs of district Chakwal and found blatant differences among actual and reported data to IRMNCP. According to provided data by EDO health, 796 deliverers were handled at 18 BHUs of the district, but after verification, it was revealed that only 144 deliveries were conducted. The data of EDO health in Chakwal showed increase in services by 451% through the fake data, he added.

He said the audit team also visited 37 BHUs of Faisalabad where 1,543 deliveries were reported, while actual data found only 833 cases on available register.

In Raheem Yar Khan, 28 BHUs were audited and 915 out of 1,278 were found correct while the administration increased the data by 40% to conceal facts. He said 33 percent data was increased at 12 BHUs of Mianwali where 419 deliveries were correct out of the total 557, Rajanpur 16 percent, Bahawalpur 14 prcent, Attock 10 percent while Sargodha, Sialkot and Vehari reported 7 percent fake data respectively.