Illegal termination of pregnancy on the rise in India

Bangalore, Sep 15 (UNI) More than 6.7 million abortions are reported in the country annually with 5.7 million of them being illegal terminations, mostly carried out in places that are unhygienic with unsafe technology, Dr D Narayana Reddy, President of the Council for Sexual Education and Parenthood International (CSEPI) said here today.

Delivering a keynote address at the three-day 22nd National Conference of Sexology organised by the CSEPI, Dr Reddy said as pregnant women do not get hygienic antenatal care, the maternal mortality rate was of 498 per 100,000 women which was highest in India when compared to other countries.

He said due to termination of unplanned or unwanted pregnancies through unscientific means, the maternal morbidity and mortality were high in the country. Ignorance on part of the public with regard to health aspects and on the part of the policy makers and the healthcare fraternity with regard to sexual health were the root causes of all problems, he felt.

Dr Reddy said in India an estimated 5.2 million people were infected with HIV and out of which 124,366 have developed full blown AIDS . Nearly 85 per cent of the patients got the disease through sex route.

He said reproductive and sexual health entails not only the physical dimension of health but mental and social dimensions as well. Emotional dimension could be handled effectively if myths and misconceptions prevailing about gender issues and sexuality were cleared, he added.

Pointing out that the emotional health would come up only when abuse and harassment were minimised, if not completely eliminated. He urged the patriachal system to take note of it.

Regretting that for long the medical fraternity ignored the importance of sexual health he said that still the effort to prescribe sexualogy as an seperate faculty in medical colleges had not succeeded. He said that the advent of HIV-AIDS in the early 1980s and the valuable discovery of 'Sildenifil' in the late 90's had shaken the medical fraternity out of snooze and started giving attention to it. The volume of new research and newer findings in the area of sexual health were suddenly on an upswing and these advancements in modern medicare should be distributed equitably among the poor and then only the menace of maternal mortability, infant mortality, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and sexually abusive behavior could be contained, Dr Reddy said.

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