India: Death Toll Reaches 13 İn Sterilization Tragedy

Yet another woman died in central India Wednesday because of complications arising from sterilization surgery at a government-run facility, bringing the overall death toll to 13, local media said.



Preliminary reports suggest the supervisor of the state-run program, Dr. RK Gupta, allegedly used rusty equipment to perform 83 tubectomy operations Saturday at the health facility in Bilaspur district in central state of Chhattisgarh.



Tubectomy is a surgical procedure for permanent contraception for women.



The Chhattisgarh government Wednesday registered a case of causing death by negligence against Gupta.



The state had recently given the same doctor an award for performing 100,000 surgeries in his lifetime.



Gupta reportedly performed 83 surgeries in five hours with the help of his two assistants at the Nemi Chand hospital Saturday. Federal government guidelines state that a single doctor's team can perform at most 30 surgeries a day.



Local media reports said Gupta instead blamed "contaminated" medicines given post-surgery for the deaths.



Many Indian media outlets reported that the hospital hardly had any infrastructure to deal with such a large number of operations in a single day. The women were allegedly made to lie on the unhygienic floor of the hospital for the surgeries.



Meanwhile, 16 out of 28 women who underwent tubectomy on Monday at a different camp in Bilaspur district were admitted to a hospital Wednesday following post-surgical complications.



The Chhattisgarh High Court also took suo motu action over the incident and issued a notice to the state government.



Sterilization is a popular birth control measure in India where the government provides incentives to women. In Chhattisgarh state, the incentive was $24.



Some 50 women who underwent surgery Saturday still remain in hospital. Out of the 50, the condition of over 20 women is said to be critical.



The state's Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has come under severe public criticism from politicians and medical experts when it emerged Wednesday the victims showed signs of toxic shock caused by dirty surgical equipment. The Congress party has called for a strike in Chhattisgarh to protest against the deaths.



"The blame game for the botched-up surgery does not merely rest on the doctors alone. The health apparatus of any state government is such that a doctor performing tubectomy operation has to achieve certain targets and produce numbers," Dr. Saeed Farani, a general surgeon in western state of Maharashtra, said.



"Most of the doctors performing tubectomy operation in government-run free camps are not surgeons. They are only trained to do the surgeries," Farani added.



"When post-surgical complications arise, these doctors can't handle it," he said.



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