A YEAR ago a hospital in São Paulo announced that its maternity ward would henceforth only admit clients from 10am to 4pm, Monday to Friday. The message was clear: births by appointment only—that is, by Caesarean section. For Arthur Chioro, Brazil’s health minister, it was equally unequivocal: the country’s attitude to birth “has become absurd”.
In 2009 Brazil became the first country where less than half of babies were born as nature intended. At the last count, in 2013, fully 57% of births were by Caesarean section, in which the baby is delivered through an incision in the abdomen and uterus—almost double the proportion two decades ago. In Brazil’s private health-care system, Caesareans now account for nearly nine in ten births. Brazilian mothers say, only half jokingly, that their obstetricians would not know how to pull out a baby without cutting them open.
A recent study of 21 countries published in the Lancet, a medical journal, estimated that 31% of births were by Caesarean section in 2010-11. The rate is rising almost everywhere. The Dominican Republic and Egypt have joined Brazil in the greater-than-...
from The Economist: International http://ift.tt/1NdbgCi
No comments:
Post a Comment