Activists protest sterilisation camps

The health department has plans to hold mega sterilisation camps at select health care facilities in Rajasthan on World Population Day. But health activists in the state have demanded that the camps be stopped as they “put lives of women in danger”.

Camp approach to sterilisation has been widely criticised by public health experts across the country as these massive sterilisation operations within a set time period and under constrained infrastructural settings leave enough scope for violation of standard operating procedures to ensure safe surgeries.

The activists said the issue has been raised time and again and assessment of various such camps in different parts of the country have repeatedly raised critical questions on how frontline health workers are still burdened with sterilisation targets (if not officially then unofficially), how women are coerced to these sterilisation camps, and how surgical standards, protocols for infection control, pre and post operative care and counselling are conveniently compromised in these camps.

They said it was not without reason that the Supreme Court decision on September 14, 2016, called for governments to make a shift from camp approach to sterilisations to making sterilisation services a regular part of health care service delivery. HTC