Alarming rate of cesarean delivery
Recently, Save the Children Bangladesh released an alarming report that claimed that unnecessary caesarean operations have increased by 51 percent over the last two years, costing patients USD 483 million per year. In 2018 alone, the country saw an estimated 860,000 such operations, while up to 300,000 women in need of C-section were unable to afford it.
According to WHO, the ideal range of C-section births in a country should be around 10 to 15 percent. In 2004, the number of C-section births in Bangladesh was just 4 percent, but over a span of ten years, the country has witnessed a five-fold increase. Women who undergo caesarean surgeries are more likely to have an infection, excessive bleeding, prolonged postpartum pain, and a significantly longer recovery. But natural births, on the other hand, enable mothers and babies to have physical contact sooner with breastfeeding beginning earlier.
In urban areas, surgical deliveries in private hospitals—especially in the capital—have become so common that normal births are almost unheard of these days. Some unscrupulous clinic owners encourage C-section given its business value. In the developed countries, unnecessary C-section births are discouraged and we also expect a policy from the government discouraging such practices.
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