101. All credit for deliveries goes to skilled midwives. P S Remesh Chandran

101

All credit for deliveries goes to skilled midwives

P S Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum
 Article Title Image By Art Cats. Graphics: Adobe SP.

Most normal deliveries in India are done entirely by midwives, assisted of course by trained nurses, but they do not get the credit; doctors snatch it away. Midwifery is the most ancient healing art in India and in the world, far older than doctoring. All credit for safe and normal deliveries goes to the dedicated midwives of India. If a delivery goes good in a hospital, credit goes to the doctor; if a delivery goes bad, the midwife is the scapegoat for the doctor to escape punishment. Neither the Indian Medical Association nor the Kerala Government Medical Officers’ Association have ever condemned doctors associated with atrocities against women in delivery rooms. Had there been no skilled midwives as there are now, most of the deliveries in India would have ended in brutal murders, considering the incompetence of present day Indian doctors after introducing the non-merit payment and capitation seats systems for M. B. B. S. Courses. Born to rich and influential parents, these new generation body mechanics do not fear law and know many ways to slip out of legal complications in hospitals. Most often, they are assisted by police officers and lawyers, considering the social status and influence of doctors as healers. Doctors in the new age are technology-savvy and are more familiar with data and image-collecting and sharing instruments. As officers of the department, doctors have sure chances of escaping punishment as they are rich, professionally connected and D M Os, D H Ss, Health Secretaries, and Health Ministers will protect them, as a rule. So, they are more prone to commit hospital crimes than lower category employees who know they will never escape punishment, all will be against them and they will loose their jobs also. Therefore there is lesser chance of lower staff committing crimes. Another factor which the world has not yet begun to understand and taking into account is, doctors nowadays do not grow up and become mentally mature. Everyone matures after education, which in the past was 10+2+5 years for a doctor with only MBBS. Now with several higher studies to undergo, they mature very lately, behaving like children even in their late adulthood, a condition defined as Psychological Neoteny by Evolutionary Psychiatrists. Learning needs child-like attendance, and if they continue to learn throughout their life till their death, which is now standard for a doctor, they will never grow up. Hence incidents like these. 

In my knowledge I know that a lady who got 5 marks out of 100 for her English First Paper and 8 marks out of 100 for her English Second Paper in her high school days made it to the post of an Assistant Surgeon in the Kerala Health Services. Had M. B. B. S. Course been conducted not in English but in Malayalam, she would have passed the exam. So, either she did not pass the exam or someone else wrote the exam for her. Justice M. P. Menon Commission, concluding the trials on the fake mark list and medical course admissions in Kerala, commented that they could expose just a few of the fake mark list cases only and thousands were still working in the Kerala health services department and other private hospitals. Indian Medical Association never uttered a word about this scam. No midwife in India has ever degraded herself to such low academic standards as doctors. Or is it that Medicine and Surgery are taught in India not in English? Midwifery is the most ancient healing art in India and in the world. It is time some one writes an ode to midwifery.

Article Title Image By Pexels. Graphics: Adobe SP.

[In response to news article ‘Skilled midwives save newborns’ lives’ on 26 June 2011]