This past month we have worked hard on conducting a community profile by interviewing 160 women in Hyderabad. If you want to see the entire report I can send it to you but I chose to take out only a few things and let you read them. Hopefully you will get a bit of an idea of what we have been experiencing in our interactions with the locals.

In the month of November 2011, MGMH (the hospital we are working in) saw 8983 pregnant women. Because they come in Mon-Sat, we took the blood pressures of all but the Saturday visits! MGMH is a referral hospital and after MGMH there is one other referral hospital. MGMH takes cases from as far away as Karnataka, India. If there are maternal problems, they consult with OGH hospital in Hyderabad and if MGMH cannot handle an infant case, the infant is sent to Nilphour Hospital in Hyderabad. There are 456 maternity beds available and 200 Doctors, Surgeons, and Post Grads, 76 Nurses, and 60 Daimas (or janitors who do all of the bloody, dirty cleaning jobs) work there.

The verse John 10:10 express’ clearly how Satan wishes to destroy lives. We have seen that through the large percentage of women who have Anaemia from low Haemoglobin, resulting in excessive bleeding and foetal distress during pregnancy and delivery. If the following lies about food were not in place, most of these women would not be suffering and a significantly larger portion of children would survive!

Harmful beliefs to pregnant women and childbirth:
-No liquid items (juice) or cold items
-Pregnant women should not eat papaya it could cause the woman to miscarry; banana causes vomiting, makes an unhealthy baby, and can cause asthma; brinjal will make previous c-section stiches weak; pregnant women should not eat semiga, umpa, pineapple, blackberries, eggs, spinach (or any green vegetable), or meat(which are large sources of iron needed for healthy haemoglobin levels in the blood).
-Some women even stated that they should only eat rice and curd and curd with eggs can cause jaundice.
-An eclipse during pregnancy is believed to cause malformations, and some women are not allowed to eat or drink after/before daylight
–one woman even said they give the next bride in the family the preserved umbilical cord in a banana, believing she will get pregnant because of it.

The following are blurbs written by a few of my fellow BASers after their interviews were conducted.

Abortion:
Around 10 years ago Indians would get an abortion if they were expecting a girl, but today it is illegal to know the sex of your baby before delivery. Sadly, most remote living and uneducated women will get an abortion if they already have enough children and therefore can't provide for another family member. Another pressing issue is unmarried pregnant women. They will most likely have an abortion to prevent being rejected from society (I, Stefanie have personally walked through this with an Indian girl here and am willing to share the story if any of you are interested, but it’s tragic.). At government hospitals, abortion is conveniently free and legally done by doctors. –Maj from Denmark

Pregnancy before Marriage:
A couple weeks back I was having my Sari rewrapped by a nurse in the hospital and I began to strike up a conversation with her. She casually told me about her children and I caught myself later asking her if she has a husband. She looked at me shocked and slightly offended and said; “I told you earlier I have children!!” I still wasn’t connecting the dots but I quickly realized that I had asked a mother if she was married. In India, the words mother and marriage must always be interchangeable and are never seen apart from each other. The young nurse went on to explain to me that I should never, never ask a woman with children if she is married. “We do not have children outside of marriage,” she insisted.
“But sometimes it can happen, right?” I quizzically asked back.
“No. No. No. No,” she paused for a moment and reluctantly finally said, “ok, fine. Maybe sometimes it is happening. But it is very shameful and never, ever discussed.”
That was my first experience with asking Indian woman what they thought about pregnancy before marriage. As I sought out for other opinions I didn’t get anything that ventured much further off than that. It is considered a huge shame to the woman and to the family to get pregnant outside of wedlock. Clearly in the bible it is stating the same thing. However, I do think that the tenderness of God doesn’t find great shame in the situation, but pain in what it means for the life of the child and the mother. He created man and woman to be together forever when they choose to procreate, so doing this outside of the commitment of “forever” only leads to unnecessary pain. It’s not the Fathers heart to see children born to an unmarried couple and I respect that India respects this so much. I do however, see a lot of religiosity in the way they approach it. I think that it’s a big taboo that needs to be discussed more openly and frequently and I definitely think that more grace and love needs to be extended to those who find themselves in this type of situation. –Laura from America.

When an Indian woman gets pregnant before she is married it is known that her life will from now on change. She gets neglected from her society. She will have to move out of the village and away from her family. She will not get accepted, respected, or shown mercy to. People will treat her very badly, most verbally, and with neglecting. Even doctors at the hospital often treat these women with no respect.
Most of these pregnancies will end in an abortion without anyone knowing it ever happened. That is the easiest way out for the girl. It has also been common to commit suicide in this situation.
Every woman that I asked this question “What happens if a woman gets pregnant before marriage?” they all responded that this is very bad! It seems like the important factor is the loose woman, and not the innocent child growing inside of her. No man will want to marry a girl that this has happened to. It seems like a hopeless situation for the woman! -Rebekka from Norway

Rape:
Unfortunately rape is not uncommon in Hyderabad. Rape seems to happen mostly with younger girls who don’t have a voice to stand up for themselves. While in the hospital we experienced a 12-year-old girl who came in a month after she had been gang raped. She had not reported the incident for a month and the doctors were not able to get any evidence of who committed the rape. I asked if this was common and a nurse had informed me that the hospital sees these cases often. -Unknown

The following charges are in Australian dollars (which is a bit higher than Canadian) to help put the prices in perspective. Government hospitals are free (apart from the corrupt workers who charge families for small things like letting the women use the toilets; something which we witnessed often. When we noticed, we would refuse to leave the families side so that it could not happen without us seeing it, then the diamias would not do it. Ha!) so the prices only apply to private hospitals. Keep in mind that most live on less than 4 dollars a day and the government hospitals are unsanitary and the doctors do not give the best care. We have had seen many babies needing to be transferred to NICU that waited in the cold baby room, uncovered, for 3 plus hours before the nurses finally moved them.

Delivery: 144.69 Repair of episiotomy: 54.26 Catheterization: 1.81 Removal of sutures: 1.06 Dressing: Large: 2.77, M: 1.49, S: 0.74 Caesarean Section: 283.51 Manual removal of placenta: 54.26 IV set/canulla: 10.64 Lumbar Puncture: 10.85 Blood group and RHO type: 1.06 Pap smear: 2.77 Urine Pregnancy test: 2.87 Low Forceps: 162.77 Fistula repair: 379.79 Suturing with local anaesthetic: 5.32 Suturing without local anaesthetic(its actually an option!): 3.62 Ultrasound: 5.43

So, this week is a little different. I hope these blogs are giving you insight into the lives here. I am trying to keep a balance between the positives and negatives but unfortunately it is often the negatives that stand out the most. Next time I write I’ll be in TANZANIA, AFRICA (I have never been to Africa.)!
Stefanie