After four women from Rangareddy district near Hyderabad died after undergoing a sterilisation procedure at a government hospital in Ibrahimpatnam, the Telangana government has said that a committee has been set up to probe the incident. Director of Public Health G Srinivasa Rao told the media on Tuesday, August 30, that a committee of experts headed by him will submit a report to the government in seven days. The hospital superintendent was suspended, and the medical licence of the doctor who performed the double puncture laproscopy (DPL) procedure on the four deceased women was temporarily cancelled, Srinivasa Rao said. The four women, aged between 22 to 32 years, were reportedly among 34 women who underwent the DPL procedure at Government Civil Hospital, Ibrahimpatnam on August 25. Two deaths were confirmed by the government on Monday, and the other two on Tuesday.
After undergoing the procedure, the four women reportedly complained of symptoms related to acute gastroenteritis and were admitted to private hospitals. Two of them, Mamatha and Sushma, reportedly died on Sunday evening, while two more women, Mounika and Lavanya, have also lost their lives since then. Protests erupted in Ibrahimpatnam alleging medical negligence, and the state government has announced ex gratia of Rs 5 lakh and a 2BHK house under the government’s housing scheme for the families of the deceased. The government has also offered to bear the expenses of the deceased women’s children’s education at government residential schools, the DPH said on Tuesday.
“We are waiting for a complete post-mortem report. If it was gastroenteritis and sepsis, we will have to look into the water consumed after the procedure. We will also look into whether it could’ve been a fault with the equipment, if there was an issue with the surgeon’s technique, which injured other organs, etc,” the DPH said, adding that the committee will also look into any lapses in following guidelines on the maximum procedures allowed to be done at a single health facility by one doctor. He said that the women were fine when they were discharged on August 25, and complained of complications over the next two days. The remaining 30 women who also underwent the procedure at the hospital on the same day were also screened and nine of them are admitted to hospitals now, Srinivasa Rao said, adding that all of them are now stable.
Srinivas Rao said that this was the first such incident since the formation of Telangana in 2014. He noted that since the total fertility rate (TFR) in Telangana along with other south Indian states had gone below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, the state government had stopped having a targeted approach towards family planning and conducting sterilisation procedures in camp mode since 2016. However, people can voluntarily visit fixed-day sterilisations at designated health facilities, with the date announced in advance, he said. He added that about 1.5 lakh sterilisation procedures are performed on average per year in the state in recent years, with 1,10,214 procedures performed in 2021-22.
“We will review the program and take precautions. We will also create awareness, as sadly family planning has become a female-centric program. There are modern contraception methods available. Everyone doesn't need permanent sterilisation procedures. And men can also get sterilisation procedures done. Currently only around 3% of the sterlisation procedures done in Telangana are NSVs (No Scalpel Vasectomies for men),” Srinivasa Rao said.