Between 2008 and March 2012, the Centre, under its Family Planning Insurance Scheme, had to pay compensation for botched sterilisation procedures which included 438 cases of complications, 18,887 failure cases and 675 death cases.
In 2012, the Ministry of Health informed the Lok Sabha that between 2009 and 2012, families of 568 women had to be paid compensation after they died during or post sterilisation surgeries.
Statistics show despite female sterilisation being invasive, more time consuming and involving more risks, the government has failed to encourage male sterilisation, which is less intrusive, needs little post-operative care and is safer.
Citing this data, activists and health care professionals are demanding that the Centre should now focus on male sterilisation and expand the bouquet of temporary contraception.
Poonam Muttreja, executive director of Population Foundation of India said there is a need to review the family planning programmes and also wean away from the practice of giving incentives for meeting targets.
“Family planning programmes in India have never been assessed and evaluated. There is lack of counselling and poor management of side effects for women who undergo permanent and temporary contraception. Also, we need to give incentives not for meeting targets by sterilising more numbers, but for meeting the quality requirements of the procedures,” she said.
In 2011, the government conducted sterilisation of 150,540 women as against 201,715 in 2012 -- a jump of 33.99 per cent; the number of men who were sterilised during this period grew by 3.03 per cent.
Despite redesigning its family planning programme to have more focus on spacing methods, the government has relied heavily on sterilisation carried out through camps.
A senior official in the Ministry of Health admitted that little work was done to research and establish newer, safer ways of permanent contraception. “Even for temporary contraception the government has not been able to offer modern forms like injectible contraception. From our field visits we have been able to gather that women cannot force men to use condoms, in some areas where religious or cultural diktats do not allow contraception or the men themselves are against it, women have confided that they cannot even rely on intrauterine devices or birth control pills. In such scenarios injectible contraception is ideal,” the official said.
With the District Level Household & Facility Survey (2007-08) indicating that 46 per cent of the people are not using any form of contraceptive, non government organisations want the government to redouble the efforts to meet the gap.
“At the London Summit on Family Planning (2012), the Government of India committed to additionally providing 48 million women and girls with access to contraceptives by 2020. However, around 1 in 5 women of reproductive age do not have access to contraception such as condoms and OC pills. India’s promises at the Family Planning 2012 Global Summit will reinforce the pressures of meeting ‘targets’, which has dangerous and long-term implications for the health of the people,” said Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, Sama Resource Group for Women and Health, Common Health and National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights in a statement.
Concerns are also being expressed over the failure to adhere to the 2005 Supreme Court order that enforced following guidelines for conducting sterilization procedures.
