WOMAN CONSTRAINED TO GIVE BIRTH TO BABY ON A BRIDGE IN UTTARAKHAND

The seventeen year old Uttarakhand State is truly in a mess. The health sector particularly is in tremendous deteriorating condition with lack of medical facilities in the ill equipped government hospitals having negligible or in some even no doctors, compounders or even medicines.

The block headquarters of the state have no health centre or dispensaries or even if they do exist then the doctors are conspicuous by their absense. The ambulance service is negligible and rather unavailable with pregnant women delivering their babies in utterly shock conditions either on swinging bridges or midway on way to hospital.

This most pathetic conditions of lack of hospitals and health centres at the decentralised level and complete absense of ambulances in critical circumstances have made everybody to think ultimately that was it for this chaos , our movement activists have laid down their precious lives during the Uttarakhand movement or after all what for are we electing our successive governments in Uttarakhand for the last so many years.

A picture of a distressed pregnant woman in Chakrata, the constituency of the state Congress president and five time MLA compelled to give birth to her baby on the way in the absence of health facilities and being discarded by the nurse, posted in facebook is going viral which unambiguously exposes the poor status of health facilities in Uttarakhand state and non responsive attitude of the authorities concerned to come to the rescue of such hapless pregnant women.

According to the news reports on 24th October a women gave birth to a baby in critical circumstances in a bridge with blood splattered all around. The shocking incident happened in Block Kalsi, Tyuni in Chakrata Tehsil. When the 24 year old woman groaning in excessive pain went to local Tyuni Hospital, the nurse directed her to go somewhere else as the doctor was not available in the hospital at that point in time. Despite the repeated requests of the pregnant mother groaning in pain to admit her, the nurse did not relent and was asked to go.

The woman in traumatic pain ultimately gave birth to a child on a swinging bridge in utmost pathetic condition with blood splattered all around. Such is the pathetic condition of the hospitals and its complacent and erratic staff in entire UTTARAKHAND despite the state government’s repeated claims of doing its best to improve the health services in the state.
Sunil Negi, PRESIDENT, UTTARAKHAND JOURNALISTS FORUM