Days after Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi sought a law to regulate Cesare-
an surgery done for commercial gains, data released by the Union Health Ministry on Tuesday showed that nationwide average of such deliveries has doubled in last eight years from 8.5 per cent in 2005-06 to 17.2 per cent in 2014-15.
In the private sector, Caesarean section surgeries rose to about 40.9 per cent of deliveries in 2015-16 from 27.7 per cent in 2005-06. However, such surgeries in public health facilities declined from 15.2 per cent during NHFS-3 (2005-06) to 11.9 per cent during 2015-16, as per the National Family Health Survey-4.
“We are trying to tell the states to convince the private sector to do Caesarean only when it is required,” Health Secretary C K Mishra told reporters here on Tuesday.
He said it is a very “dichotomous” situation where on the one hand the ministry is trying to create facilities to do caesarean operations in public health facilities while a lot of caesarean surgeries are happening in private sector which is elective.
Joint Secretary (Health) Manoj Jhalani said that the Ministry has been writing the gynaecology associations and trying to suggest to them to use provisions of The Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act and others to nudge the private providers whose caesarean rates are “excessive”.
Recently, Maneka had written to Health Minister J P Nadda, saying the doctors who carry out Caesarean operations without a valid medical reason must be “named and shamed”. Gandhi also wanted Nadda to make it mandatory for hospitals to display their rate of Caesarean deliveries in response to a Change.Org petition against hospitals and doctors profiteering by pushing women towards surgical deliveries instead of natural vaginal birth. Over 21 years to 2014, caesarean section deliveries went up from 10 per cent to 30 per cent, as per a report by The lancet, a peer-reviewed global medical journal.