Sterilization Deaths Show India’s Health Care Ills
Sterilization deaths show India’s health care ills – The deaths of 12 women after they underwent sterilization procedures this week have raised serious ethical questions about India’s drive to curb a booming population by paying women who get sterilized.
The deaths also exposed the dangerous lack of oversight in India’s $74 billion health care industry. A top medical official said Wednesday that the surgeon who performed the operations at the government-run “health camp” in Chhattisgarh state plowed through more than 80 surgeries in six hours — a clear breach of government protocol, which prohibits surgeons from performing more than 30 sterilizations in a day.
The surgeon, Dr. R.K. Gupta, was honored by the state government in January for performing over 50,000 laparoscopic tubectomies, said Dr. S.K. Mandal, the chief medical officer in Chhattisgarh.
“He’s a very senior and respected surgeon,” he said.
Mandal said he believed Gupta was under pressure to meet government-set targets for sterilizations. “The people from the health department set up some targets and we have to achieve them by 31st March,” Mandal said.
A spokeswoman for the federal health ministry said she was not aware of sterilization targets for states. India’s government had said it stopped setting targets for sterilizing women in the 1990s.
But doctors and human rights workers have alleged for years that targets exist — which would lead to inevitable coercion in villages where most people have very limited access to both education and health care.
The government has also started a criminal investigation into Gupta’s conduct and said that the victims’ families would each receive about $6,600 in compensation. Four government doctors, including Gupta and the district’s chief medical officer, have been suspended.
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