"Facing
realities"
Women waiting in line outside the operating room
watch in shock as a patient is wheeled out of the operating room after having
double puncture laporoscopic tubectomy surgery at a government-sponsored,
one-day sterilization camp for poor village women at Shatnagar Hospital. The
government sponsored camps are held all across the state in tiny villages.
The camp travels from town to town but there are as many as four per month in
one location, sterilizing from 50 to 350 women per day. A great deal of outreach
work is done, especially in remote villages, to inform the women about the
camp. They are offered an incentive of around $11 US for undergoing the
procedure, a large sum for most of these women. Many women have to walk to
the clinic, sometimes for miles on their bare feet to be sterilized.
