The Daily Mail is reporting that doctors at the government-run Manikchak Rural Hospital in West Bengal carried out 106 sterilization procedures in a single day, then carried the still unconscious patients into a nearby field to recover.
Dr Amal Krishna Pal and Dr Joydip Majumder carried out the procedures with the help of Dr Purnendu Rang, a gynecologist from the nearby Ratua health care facility.
According to the government, the sterilization drive broke several rules regarding how these practices are to be carried out, such as how health care facilities are restricted to 25 sterilizations per day, and must allow three hours of observation after the operation takes place.
In addition to breaking these rules, the ill-equipped hospital has only 60 beds, only half of which are available to women, which is why hospital orderlies were asked to carry the unconscious women to a nearby field. Except for those who had family or friends in attendance, the women were left alone to regain consciousness after the surgery.
The sterilization camp began at 10 a.m. on the morning of February 6 and lasted until 7:30 p.m. Many patients were sent home on cycle vans long before they were ready to travel, the NY Daily News reported.
One woman had to be readmitted to the hospital after her cycle van collided with another vehicle on her way home. She was referred to a district hospital with critical injuries.
"This is inhuman and we have ordered a probe into the incident," Biswa Ranjan Satpathi, West Bengal's director of health services, told AFP in Kolkata.
The doctors at the hospital are now under investigation and at least one health officer has been suspended.
But instead of expressing concern for the women who were so mistreated, a spokesman for the Association for Social and Health Advancement, a non-profit organization that is behind the drive to sterilize women, was more concerned about how much harder it would now be to convince women to be sterilized.
"It is very difficult to convince women in this part of the world for sterilization," the spokesman said, according to the Times of India. "Now such an inhuman treatment of the doctors would make our task more difficult. We'll lose our credibility."
The Indian government conducts female sterilization drives as a way of controlling it's growing population. At 1.2 billion billion, Indian is the second most populated country in the world. While there are no country-wide quotas, Human Rights Watch claims that state and district level authorities pressure local health workers to achieve numerical targets for female sterilizations. They also claim that some Indian states offer incentives to women to be sterilized, such as cars, gold, and sweepstakes.
This is not the first time India's sterilization camps have come under scrutiny. Begun during the administration of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the 1970s, scores of women were sickened or died as a result of the procedures which are often carried out by ill-trained doctors working in unsanitary conditions.
In April of last year, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court of India by human rights activist Devika Biswas against the programs.
"Their target is 1 per cent population of the [village] block should be sterilized per year," Biswas said, according to UPI. "I have evidence to show that sterilization operations are conducted under torchlight. The operations are conducted without even consent forms and the poor uneducated women are not even informed about other contraception choices which are available."
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