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Sex ratio skewed in Solan

Solan, May 5, 2007 :
With the district registering the lowest ever sex ratio of 852, a question mark has been put on the role of the health authorities here. The district ranks only next to the tribal district of Lahaul and Spiti that has the lowest sex ratio of 802 in the state.

These facts have been revealed in the latest report of the state's economic survey. Compiled by the Department of Economics and Statistics, the survey has pegged the state's sex ratio at 968 with Hamirpur having the highest sex ratio of 1,099 in the state.

Further the survey points out that there has been a sharp decline in the female population in urban areas. The difference between the male and female population is quite high in the urban areas, thereby meaning that the trend of female feticide is more prevalent among the urban dwellers.

In Solan district, the number of females in the rural areas was 1,95,212 as against 2,14,150 males, while the number of females in the urban areas was as low as 35,054 as against 56,141 males.

These figures point to the adverse trend of female feticide. Since there were no female health workers who could keep a check in the urban areas the trend of medical termination of pregnancies appeared to be common.

Conversely the district town of Solan has recorded the highest population growth of 57.26 per cent in the state, while its sex ratio has shown the worst. The chief medical officer Dr S.N. Sharma while expressing surprise at the latest findings said they would conduct block specific surveys to find out which part of the district suffered the maximum decline. He said despite regular monitoring of all ultrasound machines in the district and especially in Solan little could be achieved in nabbing any culprit.

Earlier the health authorities asserted that all bordering districts suffered an adverse sex ratio due to their proximity to the neighbouring states. But the latest survey has reversed that assertion with only Solan district registering a low sex ratio. The other border districts like Sirmaur, Bilaspur and Una managed to improve the ratio to 901, 990 and 997 respectively.

Surprisingly the other tribal district of Kinnaur also registered a low sex ratio of 857, while in Shimla it stood at 896. The three districts of Mandi, Hamirpur and Kangra had registered sex ratio of 1,013, 1,099 and 1,025 respectively as per the survey.

Though NGOs were awarded projects worth lakhs to contain female feticide but they appeared to have had done little work. The CMO said more was to be done to control this menace, as the decline in the sex ratio in the age group of 0 to 6 years would have an adverse bearing on the society in the next 10-15 years. He said the problem was multifarious. It was important to keep an eye on such clinics that conducted these tests and also those which abort them.