DEADLY TARGET

Health experts blame Centre's over-emphasis on women's sterilisation for the Chhattisgarh tragedy

- JYOTSNA SINGH

THERE WAS nothing right about the sterilisation T camp held on November 8, 2014, in Chhattisgarh's Takhatpur block of Bilaspur district. An overambitious government doctor-with unsterilised equipment and virtually no manpower-set out to conduct laparoscopic tubectomy on 83 women in an abandoned private hospital.

The mass sterilisation led to the death of 13 women and left others critically ill. They were admitted for treatment in the Chhattisgarh Institute of Medical Sciences, Bilaspur district hospital and Apollo hospital. The doctor who conducted the surgeries, R K Gupta, was not just ill-equipped but also in a rush to complete the surgeries.  He took just five hours to perform the 83 surgeries spending less than four minutes on each patient.