HYDERABAD: The Niti Aayog’s assessment of district hospitals has revealed a disturbing trend of increasing caesarean or C-section deliveries being carried out in Telangana. Even as successive reports have raised an alarm on the issue of rising C-section deliveries, the numbers refuse to subside. The Niti Aayog assessment on 10 key indicators has dedicated one section on evaluating the performance of hospitals in terms of number of C-section deliveries carried out.
The report reveals that Telangana stands second among States with 53.51 per cent share of C-sections while Tamil Nadu tops the list with 55.15 per cent, indicating that all such procedures are elective rather than being used during complications.
A WHO report highlights that at any population level, having a C-section rate higher than 10 per cent is not associated with reduction in maternal and newborn mortality and so such high C-section rates indicate women opting for them.
The State’s average is more than twice the national average (20.80 per cent). Khammam and Karimnagar districts reported the most rises in C-sections. Khammam, with 65.42 per cent C-sections, had the third-highest percentage of cases in the mid-sized hospitals category, while Karimnagar, with 69.93 per cent, was the second highest in the large hospitals category.