The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has expressed shock over the new Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Amendment Draft Bill, which allows ayurvedacharyas, homoeopaths and nurses to conduct abortions.
Calling this illegal and quackery, Delhi Medical Council member Anil Bansal said: “This will simply put lives at risk.”
The IMA has maintained that this proposal is “incorrectly based on an unscientific study conducted by the Population Council in 2012, which showed that trained nurses and ayurveda physicians provide medical abortion as safely as MBBS doctors.”
“In 2012 when the MTP Act, 1971, which does not allow anyone other than an MBBS doctor registered under the Act to conduct abortions, was in place, how could ayurveda doctors and nurses carry out MTPs as per the study conducted by the Population Council? This smells of malpractices in the medical field carried out by members of the above fields,” stated the IMA.
It added that the proposal permitting non-MBBS doctors and paramedical staff to conduct abortions is also against the provisions of the Clinical Establishments Act, which does not allow even paramedical personnel trained by doctors to conduct medical procedures.
“Here, it may be noted, that MTP is a procedure meant to be conducted by an allopathic doctor only and not by the paramedical staff on their own or by any other pathies, as they are not at all well-equipped to handle critical medical conditions arising out of excessive bleeding in some cases, especially during incomplete abortions as a result of procedures and prescriptions provided by untrained and unauthorised medical or paramedical professionals during and after MTPs,” Jitendra B. Patel of the IMA.
The IMA has maintained that “if approved, this will endanger the lives of thousands of patients opting for MTP, as the above medical and paramedical professionals are neither qualified nor equipped to handle medical emergencies....”
