Avoid meat, eggs pregnant Indians told

Doctors say advice preposterous, dangerous

NEW DELHI, June 20, (AP): India’s government is advising pregnant women to avoid all meat, eggs and lusty thoughts.

Doctors say the advice is preposterous, and even dangerous, considering India’s already-poor record with maternal health. Women are often the last to eat or receive health care in traditionally patriarchal Indian households.

Malnutrition and anemia, or iron deficiency, are key factors behind India’s having one of the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality, with 174 of every 100,000 pregnancies resulting in the mother’s death in 2015. That’s better than five years earlier, when the maternal mortality rate was 205 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, but still far worse than China’s 27 per 100,000 or the United States’ 14 per 100,000, according to UNICEF.

“The government is doling out unscientific and irrational advice, instead of ensuring that poor pregnant women get to eat a nutritious, high-protein diet,” said gynecologist Arun Gadre, who is based in the western Indian city of Pune but works in rural areas.

The government booklet, titled “Mother and Child Care,” smacks of religious dogma and ignores widely accepted medical evidence that pregnant women benefit from eating protein-rich meats and can safely engage in sex, doctors said.

It says pregnant women should also shun “impure thoughts” and look at pictures of beautiful babies to benefit the fetus.

“Pregnant women should detach themselves from desire, anger, attachment, hatred and lust,” reads the booklet, released last week by the Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy, a part of the government’s ministry that promotes traditional and alternative medicine.

Defended

The traditional medicine minister defended the booklet as containing “wisdom accumulated over many centuries,” and said it did not advise specifically against sex, only against all thoughts of desire or lust.

“The booklet puts together relevant facts culled out from clinical practice in the fields of yoga and naturopathy,” Minister Shripad Naik said.

The advice is unlikely to be followed at the many government-run health centers across India. They are operated by the Health Ministry, which has had past conflicts with the traditional medicine ministry and follows more scientific practices.

The booklet is the latest push for vegetarianism by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government, which already advocates avoiding beef and strictly limits the transportation and slaughter of cows, which are considered sacred by Hindus.

But the latest homily to pregnant women has outraged the medical community.

“This is a national shame. If the calories of expectant mothers are further reduced by asking them to shun meat and eggs, this situation will only worsen,” Gadre said. “This is absurd advice to be giving to pregnant women in a country like India.”

About a third of India’s 1.3 billion people struggle to live on less than $2 a day. Many are lucky to eat more than one full meal a day, and women often give their portions up to their hungry children or husbands.

Malnourished women are more likely to give birth to underweight babies, who then are in danger of being “stunted” or not growing to their full height and weight. A full 48 percent of all Indian children under the age of 5 are considered stunted, according to a 2015 report by UNICEF.

“Undernourished girls grow into undernourished women. Married by their families while still in their teens, these girls become pregnant by the time they are 17 or 18, when their bodies have not matured enough to safely deliver a child,” said Amit Sengupta, a physician and health care activist with the Delhi Science Forum, a public advocacy organization.

He said the government’s advice to pregnant women betrayed “backward thinking” and hostility toward evidence-based science.

“This kind of advice is detrimental to women’s health,” he said.

CHENNAI, India:

Police raided an illegal fertility clinic in southern Indian at the weekend and discovered 47 surrogate mothers — who had been lured to rent their wombs for money — living in “terrible conditions”, they said.

Following a tip-off, Telangana state police raided the fertility clinic in the city of Hyderabad on Saturday and discovered the women, nearly all from northeastern India.

“The women were all huddled in one large room and had access to just one bathroom,” investigating officer

told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Monday.

“They were mostly migrants from northeastern states who had been brought here through agents and promised up to 400,000 rupees (around $6,000).”

An official from the clinic, who declined to be named, said the facility operated within the law and the women were not confined against their will.

“They were staying here as part of an agreement between the (adoptive) parent and the surrogate,” he said.

India’s surrogacy industry has come under attack from women’s rights groups who say such clinics are “baby factories” for the rich, and lack of regulation results in poor and uneducated women signing contracts they do not fully understand.

Activists say there has been a surge in demand for surrogates after the Indian government drafted a bill to outlaw commercial surrogacy — a multi-billion dollar industry.

The bill is pending clearance in the Indian parliament.

Until the ban on surrogacy passes, India continues to be among a handful of countries where women can be paid to carry another’s child through in-vitro fertilization and embryo transfer.

“The demand is very high right now and the involvement of migrant workers coming down from the northeast to take up surrogacy is new,” said

of the Indian Surrogacy Law Centre.

AGARTALA, India:

An Indian girl who made international headlines when a rare condition caused her head to swell to more than twice the normal size has died, days before she was to undergo corrective surgery.

family said she died Sunday at her home in a village in India’s remote northeast after complaining of breathlessness.

“She was otherwise fit and fine. But on Sunday she started having breathing problems and I rang up my husband asking him to come back home,” said Fatima Begum.

“He rushed home and gave her water but before we could take her to the hospital she died,” she told AFP.

The five-year-old was born with hydrocephalus, a potentially fatal condition that causes cerebrospinal fluid to build up on the brain.

Publication of pictures taken by an AFP photographer in the remote state of Tripura prompted a New Delhi hospital to treat her for free in 2013.

ST LOUIS:

Also:

A St Louis judge has declared a mistrial in a talcum powder trial after the US Supreme Court placed limits on where injury lawsuits could be filed.

Justices on Monday ruled that state courts cannot hear claims against companies not based in the state where alleged injuries occurred. The case involved suits against Bristol-Myers Squibb over the blood-thinning medication Plavix.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch reports that St Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison on Monday declared a mistrial in a case in which two out-of-state plaintiffs are part of a suit against Johnson & Johnson, claiming talcum powder caused ovarian cancer.

It’s unclear what impact the ruling might have on previous St Louis verdicts against Johnson & Johnson in which plaintiffs have been awarded more than $300 million combined.