Field Diary From UP: How the Lack of Local Healthcare Ruins Women and Children's Lives
It was a chilly January evening this year in Bhabhisa, a sleepy village in Kandhla block of Shamli district of western Uttar Pradesh. Seema, a 22-year-old woman from an OBC community, a mother of two, started feeling her labour pains. The health sub-centre of her village had been shut for past 35 years; the ground was in a dilapidated state with piles of garbage and cow dung everywhere. The land of the sub-centre was taken over by some dominant local farmers and merged into their adjoining farms.
Seeing Seema close to delivering her third child, Ramesha, Seema’s sister-in-law, rushed her to the Community Health Centre (CHC) in Kandhla, about seven km away. It was now around 9 pm. Holding Seema, she walked into the hall where the woman doctor was preparing to go home. "Please Dr Madam please," Ramesha pleaded, with a hope that Seema would be able to deliver without a problem. The doctor looked at her up and down, at Ramesha’s torn sari, at the pregnant woman doubled over with pain, and announced ‘Malik ko bulao (call the Master)'. ‘Malik’ referred to Seema’s husband, Om Prakash. By now Seema was shouting with pain, and all four staff at the CHC, including the doctor, had gathered around her. A hand clamped her mouth tightly – it was the doctor’s. As if she wouldn’t mind even if it took Seema’s life to shut her up, ‘Chup! Chup! (Shut Up!)' she shouted at both women. They told her to take the girl anywhere but here. Suddenly the Malik, Om Prakash, who has one good leg, appeared at the CHC door on crutches.
Utterly confused and unable to bear Seema’s shrieking, Ramesha tried to take Seema to the adjoining delivery room. The doctor pushed her away and the staff forcibly threw her out. Now they turned their focus on Seema. While one hand was pressed tight on her face to muzzle her screams, the other was raised to strike. The staff, including the doctor, rained slaps and punches all across her face and body. They just did not stop at that, her abdomen punched and shook aggressively multiple times. Unable to bear her intense labour pains, Seema haphazardly moved her limbs, desperate to escape the battering. She was finally thrown out of the CHC door. Her face was red and swollen, kameez (shirt) in shreds, she was completely naked from waist below. The blows tore her clothes before tearing her body. Ramesha, shocked and in disbelief, leapt at her and covered her loin with her dupatta and scrambled to get a rickshaw. Three people were thrown out and doors of the CHC clamped shut.
Ramesha and Om Prakash carried Seema to the rickshaw, helplessly pleading the driver to take them to newly opened private hospital Jeevan Raksha not very far from the CHC. Once there, they took Seema straight to the delivery room. Within a few hours the baby was born. "You have a son," Ramesha said to the half conscious mother. She could see a tiny smile on the tear drenched face.
The precarious happiness did not last long. The assault and kicks had maimed the child. The baby, put into intensive care, passed away two days later. Even if he had survived, his fate was sealed at the CHC as he would have been physically and/or mentally disabled for life. Om Prakash was slapped with a hospital bill of more than Rs 2 lakh, around Rs 12,000 for the delivery and the rest just to keep the baby alive for two days. Unable to afford the cost, Ramesha and Om Prakash arranged a small amount from the Self Help Group that Ramesha and Seema are a part of. The majority of the payment came from two local moneylenders, at an exorbitant rate of interest. It has been almost six months; they are still making payments.
In a country with the rule of law, it should have been medico legal case wherein the doctor ‘killed’ the child in the womb. The culprits would be behind bars. But this happened in Uttar Pradesh, where the rule of law is mostly missing; the doctor was apparently transferred to the another district. And that is as good as it gets. What does not surprise the local poor OBC and Scheduled Caste people is that there are many who have lost their babies in exactly the same way. It makes one wonder whether the CHC doctors in Kandhla had studied a special text? The villagers allege that paying a few thousand rupees right away to the doctor may have led to different protocol being followed.
We had come to Kandhla to attend an event 'Aman ki Asha' organised by Sarfaroshi, a group which has worked here for the last three years. This incident was narrated to us at a meeting with a women’s group in village Bhabhisa. This was one incident in one village; how many Seema’s with dead or deformed babies, how many doctors with blood on their hands dot our land? While Ramesha concluded narrating this harrowing experience among the group of women, only two women remembered the time when Bhabhisa Health Sub-Centre was operational. Of them, one who gave birth at the sub-centre, reminisces about how helpful that nurse from Kerala was, who delivered her son about 35 years back. Other women in the group looked on with a hint of hope in their voices that their meagre yet whole-hearted efforts would be enough to get their sub-centre operational again. ‘Jab sui lage gi tab hamein achha lage ga (When the healing needle jabs our arm, we will feel good).'
Syeda Hameed is a writer and Founder Chair of the Muslim Women’s Forum. Yuvraj Kalia is an analyst and social activist.
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