Electronic coding tag for newborns and mothers in Pune hospital

Pune, Sept 4: In order to keep a check on the theft or exchange of newborns in civic hospitals, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to installing an electronic system by which the

and the newborn is tagged till their stay in the hospital, reported

.

This initiative is part of the bio-baby project that was approved in the standing committee meeting. "The intention is to stop the cases of thefts, exchange of newborn in the hospital and also check female foeticide," said standing committee chairperson Vishal Tambe.

He said the electronic registeration of each pregnant women would be done when she is admitted for child delivery.

Around 200 birth take place every month at the Kamla Nehru Hospital

The newborn and the mother would be registered with the hospital, which would invlove taking impression of footprints of newborn and fingerprint of the mother through electronic machine. The wireless safety tag with coding would be put on the knee of newborn baby and on the wrist of mother. The tags have a computerised registration so every movement of the baby in the maternity home can be tracked on computer. This will help in stopping the theft or exchange of a newborn in the hospital.

"If the baby is taken to a distance more than 50 ft from the computerised reading then there is automatic siren that alerts the staff," he said

"The PMC will have 150 tags of which 20 would be used for civic hospital staff and the rest for newborn and mother. The project would be implemented at a cost of Rs 75 lakh and would be extended depending on the performance," said acting PMC health chief S T Pardeshi.

Around 200 birth take place every month at the Kamla Nehru Hospital, the highest in any of the civic hospitals, he said.

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