Natural birth may be a waiting game but is better in cases without complications

New Delhi, 18 February 2018:

The WHO has recently indicated that women in labor should be given more time to give birth and have fewer medical interventions. It also rejected a traditional benchmark in labor wards worldwide for the dilation of a woman’s cervix at the rate of 1 cm per hour, calling it as unrealistic and leading to excessive caesarean sections.

Cesarean sections (C-sections) and the use of oxytocin to speed up labor is becoming very rampant in several areas of the world. This is a synthesized form of a natural hormone routinely injected intravenously to women to cause contractions, expediting birth to avoid complications.

Speaking about this, *Padma Shri Awardee Dr K K Aggarwal, President Heart Care Foundation of India (HCFI) and Immediate Past* *National President Indian Medical Association (IMA), *said, “C-sections should be done only when vaginal delivery poses a risk to the mother or baby. This mode of delivery can cause significant complications, disability or death, particularly in settings that lack the facilities to conduct safe surgeries or treat potential complications. What we seem to be experiencing nowadays is overmedicalization of normal pregnancy and birth. Natural birth may seem like a waiting game but in the absence of any potential complications due to which a C-section may be needed, it is advisable to let nature take its course.”

Adding further, *Dr Aggarwal, who is also the Vice President of CMAAO*, said, “The patient should be informed that even elective CS is not risk-free. An audit of deliveries cesarean sections, in the private as well as public health facilities, is needed to find out the reasons for the decision to perform each cesarean section before judging that economics and not medicine, influence a doctor’s decision to do a cesarean delivery.”

Cesarean section rates may be higher in tertiary institutes or super-specialty hospitals as they get complicated cases, said *Dr Anita Kant Senior Gynecologist at Asian Institute of Medical* Sciences.