The PCPNDT act requires that a notice be displayed prominently in the room where ultrasonography is done. The notice should be to the effect that prenatal sex determination is not done there and fetal sex is not disclosed to anybody. We have an ultrasonography machine in the labor ward. There was no such notice there after the renovation of the ward. I requested the ultrasonography department chief of our institute and got a notice for that room. I sent it to the labor ward sister and asked her to put it in the ultrasonography room. She held the key to that door and she alone could do it. I could not do it because I don’t perform ultrasonography and cannot enter the room by law, except for sight-seeing maybe.
I noticed later on that the notice was put up in the corridor outside the room rather than in the room. That was quite dangerous, since the law was quite precise and clear about where it should be, and it was not where it had to be. What with the civic authority sealing ultrasonography machines with even the most minute violation of the act like failing to fill some column in patient record form, we were at risk of penal action. I sent message to the ward sister to shift the notice to inside the ultrasonography room. Two days later it was where it was. So I met the ward nurse and personally told her to shift the notice. She assured me that she would do it. Another three days passed and I found the notice still in the same old place. It was a bit high up on the wall, and I could not reach it. Luckily my Assistant Professor could, being much taller than me. I requested him and got it down. Then we reached the labor ward and found the ward nurse, who was busy talking to another nurse. I handed the notice to her like it was a very valuable parchment and she took it equally ceremoniously and looked at me questioningly.
“The notice was hung on the wall quite high up, so your servant probably could not reach it to take it down. I got our tall Assistant Professor to take it down for me. Now will you please put it in the ultrasonography room?”
She thought quickly over what I had said and laughed loudly as if what I had just said was a good joke. Probably she thought that bit about the not so tall servant not being able to reach the notice was a joke. “OK” she said.
“That was lost on her” our Associate Professor said.
“I know” I said. I had done it partly to get it done, and partly to satisfy my need for justified sarcasm, not to improve the ward nurse in any way.
