Low sex ratio in Chennai and in 8 districts
Posted on: 09/Nov/2019 9:45:38 AM
The official had discovered that the district has recorded the lowest sex ratio at birth in TN in 2019.
It must be noted that the registrar of births and deaths have recorded 881 girls per 1000 boys at birth in Villupuram in 2019 when compared to 909 girls per 1000 boys in 2016. In the year 2017, the sex ratio came down to 883 girls per 1000 boys and the in 2018 sex ratio went up to 894. In 2019, the sex ratio has slumped by 13 points.
Dr. K. Kolandaswamy, director of public health, expressed his thoughts. He spoke about how last time an infanticide case recorded in TN was at least a decade back and since then TN hasn’t witnessed anything like this. It is worth mentioning here that Dr. Kolandaswamy is also the registrar of births and deaths. Foeticide has been responsible for the gap in the sex ratio in some districts of TN. He concluded that efforts have been going on to crack down on the doctors and quacks involved in sex determination and sex-selective abortions.
According to S. Malarvizhi, women and child welfare activists, working in the Villupuram district, in the rural areas many women slip away from their homes to leave their girl babies in government cradles. She then revealed how 5% of the babies die due to choking. She was unsure about the food that caused choking in the babies.
Information collected is in the last 3 years the overall sex ratio at birth in TN has gone up from 932 in 2016 to 933 in 2018 and 936 until 19th October 2019. In these 3 years, some districts like Perumbalur have seen steep rise whereas others like Ramanathapuram, Ariyalur, etc have recorded fall between 35 and 48 points. Fall in the sex ratio at birth is recorded in cities like Chennai and nearby districts also.
Dr. K. Senthil Raj, National Health Mission project director, explained how TN has a robust system of recording births. He then shed light on how all pregnancies were registered and how all pregnant women were tracked until their delivery. He highlighted that any aberration appears first in this data.
