A panel discussion was held to commemorate the day with around 200 attendees
Experts and activists on birth related subjects took part in the celebrations of International Day for Midwife at LV Prasad Films Lab at Banjara Hills, Hyderabad. Organised by The Sanctum it was graced by well over 200 people, midwife professionals, doctors, mothers, mothers to be etc.
These included: Subarna Ghosh, an activist campaigning to make hospitals publicly declare their caesarean numbers; Dr M Prakasamma, Founder, Society of Midwives, India (SOMI a national professional organisation with 10,000 members) and Ruth Malik, an Australian living in India Founder, Birth India, a non-profit body, she is adoula and hypnobrithing practitioner; Dr Viajaya Krishnan, certified professional midwife (CPM), a leading official Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator in India and Founder, The Sanctum, Natural Birth Center and Dr Jayanthi; DrArchana from Apollo Hospitals.
They also participated in the panel discussion organised to mark the occasion—International Day for Midwife. The panel discussion was moderated by C Vanaja.
Participating in the panel discussion Dr Prakasamma said Telangana leads in India in caesarean births.
Subarna Ghosh said talking openly about sex and vagina is still considered taboo. So what empowerment are we talking. I am being treated as a criminal for campaigning to make hospitals publicly declare their caesarean operations numbers. Why should so many women die for normal, physiological process called pregnancy and birth, she questioned.
If you want to have normal delivery, Midwife is key Subarna Ghosh observed.
Dr Archana said being a medical doctor, she begged herself for a normal birth. Doctors unfortunately today are not equipped to handle normal births. They are so tuned to caesareans that they hardly have any expertise to handle such cases.
When doctors have not seen or handled a single normal delivery during their MBBS course, how are they going to handle normal births asked moderator Vanaja. Babies are brought in to this world unnaturally, said Dr Krishnan.
Dr Prakasamma said for years together the institutions have spread message to women that you are a womb. You are a machine. Come to us and go home with the baby. Now women are saying why wait? Cut us. It is a sad situation. But, things are going to change soon. Government of India is introducing mid wife training at a very large scale, she observed.
The panellists have also also opined that natural births as a subject must be included in medical education and curriculum.
Midwives are qualified to international standards are care givers who are skilled so well can provide 87 per cent of services needed by mothers and newborns. Midwives are experts in understanding this physiology of labour and birth and therefore experts in normal births informed Dr Krishnan.
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