Make 100% institutional childbirth in India: TMC

New Delhi: Trinamool Congress has demanded 100 per cent institutional childbirth in India. While speaking in Rajya Sabha during the first Zero Hour on Wednesday, TMC member and Indian Medical Association (IMA) chief Santanu Sen said doctors and trained nurses are needed in more numbers for observing whether the uterus of mother after childbirth is properly contracting or not as the alternate method of injecting oxytocin.

The Centre had recently issued an advisory to all states to follow the "Gujarat model" of childbirth; advocates cutting the umbilical cord between mother and child after natural childbirth only after the placenta is out of mother's body on its own and also mentioned that prophylactic oxytocin are given to women only after the placenta is delivered.

Sen raised the issue saying that till now there are many cases of 'home deliveries and deliveries under untrained nurses' in rural India. So how does it guarantee the mother's life safety from postpartum hemorrhage? Generally, the oxytocin injection allows more maternal blood flow to the child to prevent neonatal anaemia or jaundice and helps to decrease the maternal death, he said. "Even 500 ml of blood loss is enough to cause maternal death," mentioned.

The IMA chief further asked Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry to follow West Bengal's health model, where institutional childbirth is 99 per cent and in Gujarat, the number is 87 per cent.