Uterus removed by mafia doctors?

Prem

As we travel 250 kilometers south of Delhi into the colourful state of Rajasthan, the colours become obvious: we drive through the lush green fields of countryside. From a distance, the fields seem to be sprinkled with colours. As we move closer, we see women working in the fields - clad in bright yellow and orange.

We stop in a village where peace and tranquility seem to be the order – it’s serene and pristine. We see women pumping water from tube-wells, men sitting on wooden string beds smoking hookah on the front yard, buffalos gazing lazily. Little can one imagine that behind the serenity, a silent crime against women were systematically committed.

We meet Prem Devi – a woman in her late thirties. She narrates how her uterus was removed from her body: “I had a pain in my stomach. I went to the nearest town to a private doctor. They told me that I have cancer, and said if my uterus is not removed, I will die. I was nervous.I was asked to organize Rs15000 (around $300) and get admitted as soon as possible. I borrowed the money and underwent an operation.’

She complains her pain never subsided after the surgery. Occasionally, she has swollen eyes, which she blames on the operation that she believes she was duped into.

She says: ‘ there was nothing wrong with my uterus. The doctors simply wanted to make money. We are poor people, we trusted them, we no longer trust doctors.’  

Like Prem, hundreds of women were forced into hysterectomy in the area by the private doctors in order to make some quick money.

A local lawyer and consumer right activist Mr Durga Prasad Saini from the neighboring Dausa first raised the matter with the authorities. He shows us hospital reports that he demanded from the five local hospitals under India’s right to information act.  We notice that almost 90 % of the surgeries were that of hysterectomy.

Failing public health service

Mr Saini tells that the private hospitals in the area mainly targeted women from four back ward castes. These women, he says, are illiterate and poor. The private hospitals mainly employ people of the targeted communities, who act as agents in the villages or sometimes even act as local doctors. When a woman complains about an illness, these agents direct them to the district hospitals. He calls it a ‘scandal’ run by ‘mafia doctors’.

A local journalist tells us that that the government hospitals don’t have any gynecologist, so women are forced to go the more expensive but better equipped private hospitals.

Mr Saini further tells is that until last year there was no law in Rajasthan to control the ever-mushrooming private clinics, but now the government has enacted a clinical establishment law to check the private clinics.

We speak to doctor R K Dhakar, owner of Madhur hospital in Bandikwe. His hospital has been accused of carrying out large number of surgeries. It is also one of the hospitals that refused to give out any information about the surgeries they conduct under the right to information act.

we join local men to smoke hookah 

Dr Dhakar refutes the allegation. He points out that the private health care is needed because public health care systems don’t have the infrastructure or doctors.

He says that the allegations are ‘politically motivated’ as the right to information was filed by a man who can’t even write.  We attempt to speak to another hospital but the doctor there refused to meet us.

Back in the village we ask the men about the situation of their women, who seems to be doing all the hard work, whist they simply smoke hookah.

They laugh and tell me “We go around in the bikes, smoke hookahs and love politics- we don’t do any work, we are men.”