Ultrasound has been a major medical advance for helping ensure women have a healthy pregnancy. It's safe, and provides an invaluable window to assessing fetal health. All women are advised to have at least one ultrasound scan done routinely during their pregnancy. Ultrasound scanners are inexpensive, and can be used for doing many scans.
They are portable, and are best used by the clinician at the bed side, so he can quickly assess how the baby is doing, without having to guess. Sadly, thanks to the draconian PCPNDT Act, ultrasound scanning facilities are not available in small villages in India, thus depriving Indian women of this invaluable medical tool. We talk about promoting safe motherhood, but by not allowing obstetricians to do scans when their patients need this we are harming pregnant women and their babies. Sadly, the lack of easy access to ultrasound is not restricted to our…
