PICME VERIFICATION

Telephonic interviews were done for 330 mothers registered for ANC during covid (Jan 2020 – Dec

2020) and pre-covid period (Jan 2019 – March 2019). One urban and one rural cluster were chosen

from all the five HUDs and one tribal cluster was chosen wherever available (Tiruvannamalai). All

the mothers for whom the data was extracted from the selected clusters were contacted until we were

able to reach 15 mothers from each time point. Hence 30 mothers from each cluster were called to

obtain data regarding the pregnancy registered during the covid / pre-covid time. A total of 527

mothers were contacted and we successfully contacted 331 mothers (196 mothers could not be

contacted-37% non-response) (Table 1)

Table 1: Description of non-response to phone calls (N=196)

Reason for non-response n (%)

Not-reachable 97 (49.5)

Did not respond 51 (26.0)

Registered with VHN phone number 4 (2.0)

Wrong number 44 (22.5)

Table 2. Discrepancy in some of the pregnancy-related data entered is PICME Vs data obtained

over phone call from selected mothers during the pre-covid and the covid period (N=331)

Variable PICME Phone call Discrepancy

n (%) n (%) n (%)
Undergone blood test 329 (99.4) 330 (99.7) 1 (0.3)

Undergone USG 310 (93.7) 331 (100) 21 (6.3)

Private 73 (23.8) 66 (21.4)

Place of
Government 233 (75.9) 241 (78.5) 33 (10.7)
delivery*
Home 1 (0.3) 0 (0)

Underweight babies (<2.5 47 (15.4) 61 (19.9) 52 (17.0)

kg)*

*25, 24 data missing in PICME for birthweight and place of delivery respectively. Hence excluded from the analysis.

The major discrepancy was found in the reporting of birth weight with a 17% discrepancy, followed

by the place of delivery (10.7%), scan (6.3%) and blood tests (0.3%) respectively. (Table 2)
 Table 3: Discrepancy in MRMBS data entered is PICME Vs data obtained over phone calls from

selected mothers during the pre-covid and covid period (N=285)

Number of No. of instalments as per telephonic interview (mother)

Discrepancy
instalments as
0 1 2 3 4 5 Total n (%)
per PICME
1 12 (52.2) 3 (13.0) 5 (21.7) 3 (13.0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 23

2 28 (45.9) 12 (19.7) 12(19.7) 7 (11.5) 2 (3.3) 0 (0) 61

3 3 (13.6) 5 (22.7) 5 (22.7) 8 (36.4) 1 (4.5) 0 (0) 22

258 (90.5)
4 14 (25.0) 9 (16.1) 9 (16.1) 21 (37.5) 3 (5.4) 0 (0) 56

5 14 (11.4) 16 (13.0) 33 (26.8) 41 (33.3) 18 (14.6) 1 (0.8) 123

Total 71 (24.9) 45 (15.8) 64 (22.5) 80 (28.1) 24 (8.4) 1 (0.3) 285

Of the 285 eligible mothers for availing MRMBS as entered in PICME, one mother of the 123

mothers received all five instalments as reported in PICME. As per the data obtained through phone

calls, a higher proportion (66.4%) of them received between one and three instalments and about

25% of them did not receive any instalments. However, as per the PICME data, more than half of

them have received four or five instalments. (Table 3)