India: Horror in a mass sterilization camp

11 years ago | Posted in: Health | 642 Views

A government hospital in West Bengal’s Malda district is facing an inquiry for conducting mass sterilization of women and relocating the women to a nearby open field.

Hospital staff at a mass sterilization camp in West Bengal dumped more than 100 women in a field to recover after their painful operations.

Four doctors at the government-run Manikchak Rural Hospital in West Bengal are under investigation after conducting as many as 106 sterilization operations on Wednesday, the Times of India reports. Medical officials say that each of these patients should have been kept under close watch for at least three hours. Instead, doctors ordered them to be placed in an open, dirty field adjacent to the hospital, exposed to infection and to the eyes of onlookers.

Local officials admit that the hospital, located 224 miles north of Kolkata, was not properly equipped to handle the large influx of patients. The hospital has 60 beds — 30 each for men and women. No more than 25 sterilizations are allowed per day, NDTV reports. Manikchak residents said that the hospital conducts sterilization drives regularly, but would put up tents for the patients in the past.

Wednesday’s sterilization camp began at 10 a.m. and lasted until 7:30 p.m. Neither of the two doctors who spearheaded the drive were gynecologists, so a gynecologist from a nearby town was asked to drive in. The patients were sent home on cycle vans because the hospital doesn’t have an ambulance of its own, India Today reports.

One woman had to be readmitted to Manikchak hospital after her cycle van collided with another vehicle on her way back home. She was referred to a district hospital with critical injuries.

“This is inhuman and we have ordered a probe into the incident,” Biswa Ranjan Satpathi, West Bengal’s director of health services, told AFP in Kolkata.

 

Female sterilization drives are part of the Indian government’s strategy for bringing its growing population under control. With over 1.2 billion people, India is the second most populated country in the world, according to The World Bank. While there are no country-wide quotas, Human Rights Watch claims that state and district level authorities pressure local health workers to achieve numerical targets for female sterilizations.

Some Indian states offer incentives — including cars, gold and sweepstakes — that promote sterilization, according to Human Rights Watch.

ref: http://www.nydailynews.com

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