Satna (Madhya Pradesh): As many as 35 women were sterilised in a remote Birsinghpur Community Health Centre in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh on Friday.
But it was no ordinary sterilisation operation, as the entire procedure was conducted under torchlight and candlelight in the absence of electricity.
The women were made to lay down on the hospital floor in the winter month of November following the shortage of beds and absence of operation theatre.
Patients and their respective attendants were made to wait for hours before the doctors arrived at the health centre.
"We have been here since 9 am in the morning, and the doctor arrived at 5 pm. He conducted the operation in the dark as there was no electricity, " said Ramswaroop, one of the attendants of a patient.
Narrating a similar ordeal, Vikram Saket, another attendant of a different patient told ETV Bharat, "we came here in the morning and the doctor reached in the evening after it got dark."
This is not an isolated incident, there have been several instances of botched up sterilisation operations in India.
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In September 2016, the Supreme Court of India ordered the government to shut down sterilisation camps across India within three years. Though women can still go to health clinics and request to have tubectomies, sterilisation camps run either by state government officials or outsourced to local NGOs, in which doctors go out to villages and encourage women to have their tubes tied, will be illegal.
