Advise them to get hysterectomy done when the ailment could be best treated with antibiotics
Roli Srivastava
Hyderabad: A surgery to treat an ailment that can be cured with antibiotics may sound far fetched, but in a small mandal of Medak district, about 70 km from here, such medical treatment is a reality.
Last Sunday, about 600 women from the ‘Lambada’ tribe gathered for a meeting organised by a social organisation, to discuss their health problems. From severe back aches to depression and from chest pain to aching joints – the problems slowly tumbled out and so did the reason for their poor health – all the assembled women, some aged under 40 and many as young as 21, have undergone hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) at the advice of their local private practitioners. The drastic treatment was given to cure these women of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which is best treated with a course of antibiotics.
“The 600 women are from Kowdipally mandal of Medak district, and have spent an average of Rs 10,000 each on their treatment,” says Subhash Chandra, project director of Centre for Action Research and People’s Development (CARPED) that has conducted the survey among these women. Predictably, these families have run into huge debts, given that they are daily wage workers on agricultural lands. The alarming revelation, confirmed by the government doctors in the area, is just the tip of the iceberg. Health activists note that such instances are repeating themselves with an alarming frequency across the state, where private doctors are cheating illiterate villagers into taking expensive treatment that is best avoided for their condition.
CARPED conducted the survey when it found that in a small hamlet of 13 families, women from eight households had undergone hysterectomy. Alarmed, they conducted the survey in the entire mandal and calculated a spending of close to Rs 60 lakh on this medical procedure. “The local doctors they (women) consult create a fear among them that the infection (pelvic inflammatory disease) could lead to cancer and that a hysterectomy is cure for it,” says Dr M Padma, in-charge of the primary healthcare centre (PHC) at Kowdipally. While at the PHC, they are told about how medication and maintaining hygiene would offer them relief, the patients are often in a hurry for a quick cure. And private practitioners are exploiting their impatience.
The pelvic infection among women is mainly because of home deliveries when untrained ayahs attend to them, according to Dr Padma. Nevertheless, Dr Padma maintains that none of the infections in any of the women she has also examined were cancerous or needed surgery. “At times, the doctors they consult are not gynaecologists but might perform surgery to make good money,” says Dr C K George, director of Institute of Health Systems, a reputed health research body that deals largely with public health issues. Dr George said hysterectomy is not the treatment for PID and an operation is done only in extreme cases.
MUMBAI MIRROR, Saturday, September 17, 2005
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