Following an online petition signed by 1.3 lakh people against the alarming rise in caesarean section surgeries in India, women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi 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,” Maneka Gandhi tweeted.
“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 told media.
According to the National Family Health Survey 2015-16, conducted in 15 states and UTs, rate of c-section surgeries in some states is as high as 87.1%. The statistics clearly violated the WHO norms which prescribes c-section deliveries to be at 10-15% of the total number of deliveries in the country.
