Even today, a majority of men expect their womenfolk to shoulder the burden of family planning. The women on their part, risk their own health to take up family planning measures either under pressure or because of unfounded beliefs.
The pathetic level of participation by men in the City in the Government’s family planning programmes forms the primary concern of top officials as yet another World Population Day falls on July 11.
Undoubtedly an area for concern when you realise that sterilisation surgeries performed on men constitute less than 0.2 per cent of the total undertaken by the Government.
The WHO has declared ‘Men at Work’ as the slogan for the day this year. “It is imperative that some awakening takes place among men, they must realise their responsibility so that the health and well-being of women can improve,” said a top health official.
Consider these statistics: In 2006–07, a total of 54,027 permanent sterilisation operations were performed in Bangalore, inclusive of BBMP areas, the urban area comprising Bangalore North, South, East and Anekal.
Of these, the ‘no scalpel vasectomy’ (NSV) operations on men constituted a mere 100 cases. In contrast, were the surgeries performed on women: 26,266 tubectomy cases and 27,661 laparoscopic cases. The State-wide figures are 766 NSVs out of 3,75,303 cases!
Poor response
The lack of participation on the part of men is perplexing since the NSV is safer and simpler than tubectomy, said the official.
“The NSV is painless, involves no stitches and no bleeding. It takes a maximum of 10 minutes for the surgery and the individual can walk home 30 to 60 minutes later. However, it’s always the husband pushing his wife to get operated,” he added.
The end result? Despite intensive propaganda, male sterilisation is yet to take off in Bangalore and Karnataka as a whole. “The City’s success ratio in NSVs is just one-tenth of the national average of two per cent. Hence, two per cent has been set as the target for Bangalore for the financial year 2007–08,” he said.
Another source had a totally different answer to the lack of participation of men—their women. “The typical Indian wife does not allow her husband to go in for vasectomy as she wrongly believes the man would be unfit to carry on his routine work later. Hence, she opts for an operation instead of her husband.’’
Meanwhile, temporary sterilisation methods for women, aimed at spacing the duration between births, are on target. Altogether 45,939 women in B’lore Urban and 10,190 in B’lore Rural opted for the IUD (commonly known as Copper-T). ‘Nirodh’ condoms were distributed to 19,974 urban women and 10,446 rural women.
The distribution figure for the entire State stood at 3,03,124. The figures for oral pills were 11,630 (urban) and 5,317 (rural) out of a State figure of 1,71,103.
So, how are the men going to be brought into the fold? The national Project Implementation Plan (PIP) for 2007–08 is likely to be approved this month. The amount earmarked for NSVs is over Rs 80 lakh. Of this, Bangalore Urban and Bangalore Rural will each be given a sum of Rs 2,92,806.
In a bid to make NSV readily available, four doctors in each of the 27 districts in the State will be given NSV training. A sum of Rs 53,000 has been allocated to each district for this and each will have to conduct one camp with at least 200 operations. “If these steps are followed, the target of 8,000 NSVs for Karnataka will definitely be met,’’ said an optimistic official.
Another official had a novel approach to the issue. “Women’s organisations can help educate women on the ease of and need for vasectomy for men. If they can organise health camps for vasectomy surgeries, we (the department) are willing to provide manpower and logistics assistance.”
Are the women listening?
