Ge Health Care in India

1526 Words7 Pages
1.0 The Case 1.1 The Ultrasound Machines and the concerns over its usage 1.1.1 The benefits of Ultrasound Machines The machines are beneficial in many ways and can be of use for the following: * Detection of fetal defects * Diagnosis of gallbladder diseases * Evaluation of blood flow in blood vessels * Identifying abnormal structures or functions of the heart * Measure the blood flow through the kidney and Detecting kidney stones * Detect prostate cancer and for the diagnosis of the emergency rooms 1.1.2 The Controversies * Since centuries, it is an Indian societal norm that people favored male children over females. * Though the machines were quite useful in a number of ways, GE had not anticipated that they could be used only to determine the sex of the babies. * British medical journal Lancet, reasoned that families are using the ultrasound machines to determine the sex of the babies and having selective abortions when knowing the unborn child was a female. 1.2 The Missing Girls In India, if a baby girl was found to have a genetic abnormality they were left to die or killed shortly after birth by some very gruesome ways. This trend is more obvious in urban cities where the sex of the baby was pronounced. 1.3 The Parental Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) act of 1994 1. This proposed another act in 1994, which banned the use of technology for sex-selective abortion. 2. The government had asked manufacturers to provide a list of buyers of that equipment, and when supplied to authorized doctors, the doctors had to fill out forms to reason why they needed to do such tests. 3. The act mentioned that an offender could serve between 2 to 5 years in prison if they were found guilty of determining the sex of the baby. (This however was never enforced until 2006 and this of course alerted doctors and forced them to
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