Southern states record alarming number of Caesareans

With the mushrooming of private hospitals with huge investments on expensive equipments, pregnancy and delivery have become a lucrative business. One of the easiest ways to make money through deliveries is by not waiting for natural deliveries, but advising the patient to go for Caesarean section. When the patient is in labour pain, it is easy to convince her to submit to Caesarean. Further, in a country driven by superstition, Caesarean offers delivery at a pre-determined time, considered auspicious. 

The largescale rise in Caesarean section surgeries in India by the private hospitals sent waves of alarm and an online campaign was initiated against it by change.org, an organisation for social change. This made Maneka Gandhi, Union Minister for Women and Child Development, to urge the private hospitals to make the numbers of normal delivery and delivery through Caesarean done by them. 

Chayan Roy Choudhury, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), says that higher Caesarean section rate is presently a concern for most developed and developing countries. He says, “Though CS rate for India is 7.8 per 100 live births, this rate goes above the 15 per cent (WHO) limit for institutional births. North-South dichotomy among the Indian states in CS rate is significant with south being on the higher side of the scale. The situation turns grimmer with 18 states and the private institutions breaching the limit. Some central Indian states are well below the 5 per cent minimum limit (WHO), indicating poor availability and utilisation of obstetric health services. Educational and economic statuses are the two most important determinants of CS rate after controlling the complication factors.” 

With so much information available at our finger tips on the Internet, it is high time that common people do a little research about the ailments, availability of alternative medicine, pros and cons of surgeries and the ethical values of the hospital of their choice. Hospitals that were seen as lifesaving sacred temples have become money-making mercenaries. Privatisation of medical education, diagnostic centres and hospitals must be done away with in a welfare state. State should be the primary care giver and not shirk in its duty to give its citizens quality health care ideally free of cost or at least within the reach of the common man.