Over 60 per cent of the deliveries in The Nilgiris district headquarters hospital are done by Caesarean section, according to public health data.
Of the 2,780 deliveries last year, 2,070 were conducted in the headquarters hospital and as many as 1,264 babies were born through C-section, the data reveals.
According to public health officials, no maternal deaths were reported between October 2013 and December 23, 2014. In the previous year, the district recorded three maternal deaths.
Primary Health Centres in the region have been conducting deliveries and are encouraged only to refer complicated cases, said Amaravathy Rajan, Medical Superintendent and Joint Director in-charge.
The five women, who died, had complications during pregnancy and were referred at a late stage from the PHCs.
“Despite the huge burden, last year we have referred only 192 cases to the tertiary care hospital in Coimbatore. As many as 909 childbirths occurred in PHCs,” she said.
Meanwhile, the operation theatre (OT) in the Government Sait Maternity Hospital in Udhagamandalm has been shut down for evaluation following the death of five women post-delivery. On the need to shut down the OT, Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan said: “Though there has been no obvious medical negligence, we have to evaluate what could have been done better. We have started with the fumigation process.”
While Health Department officials maintain that lack of facilities had not caused the deaths, G. Janardhanan, president of Public Awareness Association of Udhagamandalam, says it was only because of their frequent protests that there was some improvement in the infrastructure.
“The hospital has been receiving some attention and now the deaths have happened,” he said.
