Dylan Hannum
Dr. Wong
11/6/2015
Case 2.8: Ultrasounds In India In India, having a daughter is often viewed as incurring a lifetime of debt for parents because of the dowry payment at marriage. Mothers will abort their unborn daughters just so they may try again for a son. Some estimate that hundreds of thousands of girl fetuses are aborted each year. Boys in India are viewed as wealth earners during life and lighters of one’s funeral pyre at death. A leading cause of the abortions, some think, is the availability of ultrasounds. For more than a decade, the Indian government has tried to stop ultrasound technology from being used as a tool to determine gender. India has passed laws forbidding doctors from disclosing the sex of fetuses, required official registrations of clinics, and stiffened punishments for offenders. India’s National Family Health Survey showed that 90 percent of parents with two sons didn’t want any more children. Of those India’s National Family Health Survey, released in February, showed that 90 percent of parents with two sons didn’t want any more children. Today any clinic that has an ultrasound machine must register with the local government and provide an affidavit that it will not conduct sex selection. During an audit last year, Kumar demanded paperwork for 389 local scan centers. Only 16 percent could furnish complete address information for its patients, making it almost impossible to track women to check if they had abortions following their scans. GE took the lead in selling ultrasounds in the early 1990s soon after it began manufacturing the devices in India. It tapped Wipro’s extensive distribution and service network to deliver its products to about 80 percent of its customers. GE, by far the largest seller of ultrasound machines in India through a joint venture with the Indian outsourcing giant Wipro Ltd., introduced its own safeguards, even though that means forsaking sales. The company won’t disclose its ultrasound sales, but Wipro GE’s overall sales in India, which includes ultrasounds and other diagnostic equipment, reached about $250 million in 2006, up from $30 million in 1995. The company also teamed with banks to help doctors finance the purchase of their machines. Indian authorities have tried to regulate sales. In 1994, the government outlawed sex selection and empowered Indian authorities to search clinics and seize anything that aided sex selection. To boost sales, GE has targeted small-town doctors. The company has kept prices down by refurbishing old equipment and marketing laptop machines to doctors who travel frequently, including to rural areas. Most recently, both Siemens and GE have introduced handheld ultrasound machines, only slightly larger than a cell phone. Initially they will sell for under $10,000.
GE management should be finding new and better ways to go about the ultrasound technology that better fits the Indian government's regulations and the culture's needs. I believe that GE should come up with a device like airport security had to with the scanner. Instead of showing full body images, show where a problem area might be and have it be color coded so that you are able to deal with it. Have normal high tech ultrasounds still around only to be used for emergency cases. I think something like this would work because it would still help the families have their minds at peace about their baby but take out the risk of people who are looking for the sex of the baby. I believe this is a possible and likely outcome due to the fact that this technology is already available in other areas of scanners. It should not be that hard to take it from that area and move it to baby scanners. I have learned that the want and desire of a baby boy is so great in the Indian culture that they are willing to kill the baby girl that they have. It is so intense that people are willing to go against human nature and against the law just to have a boy. Having a boy is not a guarantee for success but they believe that having a boy is way easier than having a girl. I also learned that the Indian government is highly involved with the gender ratio issue. Even though they seem to be going on a witch hunt of sorts attacking any type of person or company who is involved with the sex selection process. This includes GE, who is abiding by every rule and law set in place by the current government.