An ambitious scheme launched by the Centre to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates is a virtual non-starter even a year after it was first initiated, with many states failing to implement it.

The Centre's efforts to track every pregnant woman to ensure delivery of ante-natal and post-natal care and trace every newborn for complete immunisation coverage are facing major roadblocks as most states are moving sluggishly on data collection.

The project, 'Mother and Child Tracking System', was launched more than a year back by Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. The data of only around 53 lakh pregnant women and 19 lakh children has been collected by the Health Ministry till the second week of July. This accounts for just 18.17 per cent of the total estimated number of 293.28 lakh pregnant women during 2010-11, a ministry report said.

Similarly, data of only 18.84 lakh children has been made available by the states till mid-July. This works to a meagre 7.44 per cent of the total estimated 253.21 lakh infants born in 2010-11, it said.

Records are being awaited, with the Health Ministry planning to soon set up a central monitoring call centre in the capital to monitor progress under the National Universal Immunisation Programme. After a year of requests to gather data, Delhi, Puducherry and most of the seven north eastern states are yet to start the process. The larger states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh, along with Assam and Union Territory of Chandigarh have also responded poorly.

Among states that are moving fast on data collection for expectant mothers and infants are Chhattisgarh, Goa, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. Goa, being a small state with few pregnant women and infants, leads the charts on both the fronts.

While the highest percentage of data collected for pregnant women so far is by Goa (74 per cent), Chhattisgarh (70.60 per cent), Rajasthan (70.27 per cent) and Gujarat (58.10 per cent) are other leading states. For infants, Goa leads with 56.55 per cent, followed by Chhattisgarh (50.32 per cent), Gujarat (36.40 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (27.76 per cent).

Uttar Pradesh, which had more than one-fifth of the total expectant mothers and infants in the country during 2010-11, has collected data of only 1.37 lakh pregnant women (2.19 per cent of the total 62.93 lakh) and of only 47,542 infants, which is less than one per cent of the total 53.61 lakh infants born in the state during the past year.

Similar is the case with Andhra Pradesh, which has so far collected data pertaining to less than one per cent of both pregnant women and infants. In India, immunisation coverage of newborns remains low at about 50 per cent.

States like West Bengal have also collected only 2.85 per cent data in the case of expectant mothers and less than one per cent in case of infants.