HYDERABAD: For an average woman in Telangana, the pain of childbirth seems to no longer end in the hospital room. Once the child is born, there is another kind of pain for her to deal with: coming up with the cash to pay for the delivery. The sky-high costs involved in institutional deliveries at private hospitals in the State are pushing many a family into indebtedness and poverty.
A study by the Mumbai-based International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS), based on data from National Family Health Survey-4, has reported that Telangana has the highest proportion of mothers who sell their assets or borrow money, in order to be able to pay for institutional delivery.
The study titled ‘Out-of-pocket expenditure and distress financing on institutional delivery in India’, published this month in the International Journal for Equity in Health, reports that around 29 per cent of the women surveyed for NFHS-4 in the State had either sold their assets or borrowed money to pay the bills out of their pockets for institutional delivery. ‘Paying out of the pocket’ here refers to not taking up the services at government maternity hospitals, where deliveries are performed for free.
According to the study, the average expenditure incurred by a mother, who has sold her assets or borrowed money to undergo institutional delivery in the State is second highest in the country at Rs 17,618, only after Kerala (Rs 20,621). In fact, there are many in the State who pay much more than this. According to the study, almost 35 per cent of mothers in the State spend Rs 20,000 or above for institutional delivery, and around 33 per cent pay Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000, and 32 per cent people pay around Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000.
The high costs of institutional deliveries, unfortunately, hurt the most socio-economically impoverished people and communities in the society. The IIPS researchers found that the percentage of mothers who pay out of their pockets for institutional deliveries at private hospitals is the highest among less educated, poor and socially disadvantaged groups.