Chattisgarh docs grilled about illegal womb removal procedures

Health officials in Chhattisgarh finished the two-day questioning of nine doctors accused of removing wombs of young women to make money under the National Health Insurance Scheme, government sources said. The nine doctors, whose licenses were suspended by the health department early this month for their involvement in persuading women to agree to uterus removal operation after being ill-advised, were interrogated as part of an inquiry, they said.

"The state government's intent was to reach to the bottom of the case as some 1,800 women were subjected to such operations in past eight months," the sources told IANS. Health and Family Welfare Minister Amar Agrawal admitted that initial evidence suggested that the doctors had managed about Rs.2 crore through such operations.

The state government found that 1,800 hysterectomies had been performed in the state, most of them illegally.

Not only can women bear children after the removal of her uterus but the procedure which is often accompanies by the removal of her ovaries might cause the early onset of osteoporosis and other diseases. Raman Kataria, a physician with a non-profit organisation in rural Chhattisgarh, said government policy was abused because of the absence of an external governing body and standard treatment guidelines.

Source: IANS