Chennai: The Tamilnadu government has announced that delivering babies at home by watching videos or movies is a punishable offence.
Lately, news has been surfacing about women going in for ‘natural birthing’ at home.
The latest news is of a woman in a village near Theni who was successfully delivered of a baby at home. The baby’s father refused to allow the health officials to remove the umbilical cord.
The woman’s father-in-law has been arrested for preventing a government official from performing his duty. Later, health officials shifted the mother and baby to the primary health centre.
But Krithiga, a 28-year-old school teacher of Tirupur, was not lucky when she attempted home birthing. She and her husband Karthikeyan watched home birthing videos and prepared for her second confinement on 22 July. She developed complications after being delivered of the baby and died on way to hospital.
Yesterday, a natural healer, Bhaskar of Coimbatore, was arrested for running a centre to train women to undergo home birthing without the help of doctors.
The government advice on home birthing comes in the wake of such incidents in Tamilnadu.