Over 1.3 lakh people have signed an online petition in concern over the steep rise in caesarean section surgeries in India, particularly in private hospitals, seeking government intervention to bring in accountability and transparency in institutional deliveries.
According to a report, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, reacting to the petition, wrote to Health Minister J P Nadda, suggesting to make it mandatory for hospitals to publicly display the number of c-section surgeries and normal deliveries carried out.
“I'd like to share my concern over alarming percentage of c-section surgeries being conducted in hospitals these days. This issue has been deeply worrying me as it has direct linkage with the health of women per se... The situation is much worse in private hospitals, which is a matter of grave concern,” tweeted Maneka Gandhi.
She further added that she has written to Nadda about the issue and its repercussions.
“We would like naming and shaming of gynaecologists who do Caesarean deliveries for no reason at all except money. I would like all women in India to get together and start protesting because a Caesarean for a woman is invasive, and turns a natural delivery into something that is an unnecessary operation,” Gandhi was quoted by Times of India as saying.
The data accumulated by the National Family Health Survey 2015-16 revealed that the rate of c-section surgeries in some states is as high as 87.1 per cent, whereas the World Health Organisation (WHO) norms prescribe c-section deliveries to be at 10-15 per cent of the total number of deliveries in the country.
