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Sterilisation camp: Doctor alleges stress to meet target

So far, a total of 14 women have died from complications arising from the surgeries. Thirteen women died after they were operated on at a sterilisation camp in Takhatpur block last Saturday, and another died late on Wednesday night after she was operated on Monday at a separate camp in Gaurela block.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Singh said, ‘I have ordered a judicial probe into the deaths. No culprit will be spared.’ He added that ‘all patients are being monitored constantly and it is our priority to provide them the best medical care’. The chief minister, however, said that he would not be resigning.

Meanwhile, the state government has sacked the surgeon who had conducted the bothced-up sterilisation at a camp for ‘dereliction of duty’ and ‘negligence’.

Gupta, who operated on the women at Takhatpur, was arrested on Thursday morning. Inspector general of police, Bilaspur, Pawan Deo said Dr Gupta had been hiding at the home of a relative about 20 km outside of Bilaspur city when the police apprehended him on Wednesday night. He added that Gupta, who had his family with him, had been ‘trying to get away’.

Initial reports had suggested the surgical equipment used by Gupta were ‘rusty’ — which might have led to the deaths of the women. But Gupta, as he was being led away by the police, told reporters that it was the medicines given to the women after their tubectomies that caused the complications.
He added that he had been ‘under pressure to meet government sterilisation targets’.  And that he was being ‘made a scapegoat’.

‘The surgeries had gone well. The medicines should be examined,’ he said.

The Chhattisgarh government on Wednesday banned the sale of six drugs used at government-run sterilisation camps in the state. The drugs include Ibrufen-400, tablets Ciprocin-500, injection Lignocaine and Lignocaine HCL, absorbent cotton wool and Zielone lotion.

After their tubectomies, the women had been given Ciprocin (an antibiotic) and Ibrufen (a painkiller).
Gupta was produced in court on Thursday and remanded in judicial custody for 15 days.

The woman who died on Wednesday had been a Baiga tribal. The Baigas are a protected tribe because of their small numbers, and government rules state that sterilisation procedures are not to be carried out on them.

Reports said 26 tubectomies were performed at Gaurela in about an hour – or at the rate of about one every two minutes. That at least one other woman who was operated on was also a Baiga; and that 16 of the women had to be rushed back to Bilaspur for emergency care after their conditions rapidly deteriorated.  

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