As India fights its first Zika outbreak, BANJOT KAUR travels to the virus-hit districts of VIDISHA and BHOPAL in MADHYA PRADESH and finds a grievously unprepared response system
We were in two minds when we went to the block hospital. The gynaecologist checked my blood report and repeated the advise of abortion. Out of sheer scare, I got the foetus aborted then and there
MADHVI SHARMA, 37, is three-month pregnant and distraught. On November 5, officials from the nearby Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Hospital came to her house in Madhya Pradesh’s Vidisha district. They were on a surveillance after Zika cases were reported from Sironj—the block where Madhvi lives. The team was particularly targeting pregnant women because Zika can deform foetuses. On finding she was pregnant, they collected her blood sample. Ten days later, block medical officer R L Dinkar and a paediatrician from the hospital came and told her she had Zika and must undergo an abortion if she did not want to have a deformed baby. Madhvi’s first two children— both girls—are differently abled and her third child—a boy—had died within hours after birth.
Officials also advised Neeta Sahu, who lives in the same locality as Madhvi, to undergo abortion. She did so on November 26. Did the officials overreact in advising abortion?
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