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Sheila's wasted jawaniBachi Karkaria | Mar 8, 2011, 12.00am IST

The two torrid item numbers which have seized the imagination of a horny male populace sayit all. March 8 will amplify the sound over the blossoming of India's women - and expresssome fury over how many more continue to be crushed under the heel of disgrace. Let usconcentrate on the lost jawani, and call for an audit of the larger waste when women's livesare thrown into the dustbin of politics.

This year's budget proposals make no special offers to women. But what Pranab Babuthreatens to take away is more ominous than what he did not give. It is hoped that the 5%service tax on healthcare will be revoked. Women bleed most from any cut in health services,

partly because of their own conditioning to cower at the back of the queue.

India is a dubious topper in many testy statistics. Just yesterday, the headlines declared thatIndian men stand 'first in sexual violence and last in gender equality'. But i would rather 

dwell on two older claims to global shame. Both deal with health, and if reversed, could pushIndia up the human development index. It currently ranks 119th, unacceptable in a country

that's among the top 10 in GDP growth.

Last year, the UN applauded the 59% fall in our maternal mortality rate (MMR) between1990 and 2008, but cautioned that it remains the highest in the world: 230 per 1,00,000 livebirths, that is 63,000 of our women still die from pregnancy related causes every year. Areyou surprised? Only 37% of Indian mothers-to-be see any health worker at all.

This grim and expensive toll is unacceptable because the causes of maternal mortality areknown, recognisable by trained workers and treatable or avoidable: severe bleeding after childbirth, infections, hypertensive disorders and unsafe abortions. None of these need'mountains of coins or small armies' as Jill Sheffield, the untiring founder-president of Women Deliver, tells her audiences of global leaders, but already have proven low-costsolutions.

Apart from the woman's right to life as guaranteed in Article 21, the death of a mother severely skews the survival chances of the newborn, and to a considerable extent, that of all

her children below the age of five. Imagine the social waste, and ask what is the point of grandiose plans for education, food, shelter, etc, when a significant number of kids simply

won't survive to benefit from them.

If the life of the marginalised does not merit your concern, think of the economic waste. Noone has bothered to come up with an Indian figure, but in 2001, it was estimated thatmaternal mortality led to a global productivity loss of $15 billion. So preventing the death of a new mother in a UP village makes national economic sense; more so in a time of fiscal belttightening.

Sheffield emphatically believes that unless the MDG 5 - reduction in MMR and universal

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access to reproductive health - is achieved, all the other Millennium Development Goals willbe negatively impacted. The cost of doing so is affordable; the price of not doing so willbankrupt all progress.

If the world puts in just an additional $12 billion a year (that is a total of $24 billion), itwould fulfil the unmet need for family planning and provide every woman with the

recommended standard of maternal and newborn care. It would reduce unintendedpregnancies by more than 66%; prevent 70% of maternal deaths; avert 44% of newborndeaths; cut unsafe abortion by 73%; and slash by 66% the disability-adjusted life years lost topregnancy-related illness and premature death.

Several yeas ago, a World Bank study found that antenatal and delivery care and familyplanning were among the six most cost-effective health interventions for low-incomecountries. So it's really win-win.

Coming to shaming global record No. 2, India also accounts for the highest number of the

world's cervical cancer cases, as many as one in four. It is estimated that 1,34,420 women arediagnosed with cervical cancer every year, and 72,825 die from the disease. It is the mostfrequent cancer among women in India, especially among those between 15 and 44 years of age. It also happens to be the only cancer that is preventable, with the help of the humanpapilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, and with effective screening.

Last year, the vaccine got into a strident political controversy, even though the six reporteddeaths in the pilot projects were found to be of totally unrelated causes. There is better newson screening: the Qiagencare HPV test, anointed by PATH, and the Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation. It can be used in places where there is no running water or electricity, andprovides results in hours, not days. This is critical for women who need to start treatment

immediately, and generally for those who travel long distances to get to a clinic. It is alreadypart of a five-year screening project covering 50,000 women under the aegis of Kolkata'sChittaranjan National Cancer Institute.

Preventing women's death and disability spreads large concentric circles of health andhappiness, makes all other developmental investments pay larger dividends, and restoresprecious womenhours otherwise lost to the exchequer. It's a simple enough math, but yet to

be grasped by those who make the political decisions and allocations. Invisible scams aredeadlier. So is the invisible scream.

THE TIMES OF INDIA

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