Numbers Aside, India’s Newborns Face Challenges
Women in the labor ward of Kasturba Maternity Hospital in Delhi. Kasturba has 350 beds for gynecology and obstetrics, with 100 more for pediatrics. There are about 60 doctors, a dozen assigned to a given shift. They deliver about 30 to 40 babies a day – those of poor women, many of them Muslims, who believe the hospital’s proximity to the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque, makes it a somewhat holy place to birth their babies. Any newborn from a poor family in India is confronted with difficult odds. India has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, with 50 deaths for every 1,000 births, according to World Bank figures. Forty-four percent of children under 5 are malnourished. Only sixty-three percent of Indians aged 15 and above are literate. But these odds seemed less immediate for some of the new mothers at Kasturba.
“It’s expensive to have a kid,” said Vidanti Mishra, 26, as she cradled the baby, her first, soon after she delivered. “We’re scared if we have children, how will we take care of them, how will we feed them? Of course I’m scared.” One of three physicians on duty, Dr. Shuchi Lakhanpal, a second-year postgraduate student, briskly made her rounds, wearing a white lab coat and striped socks, as she doled out basic advice to mothers. “You need to eat properly,” Dr. Lakhanpal sternly told a young woman in labor.
During a tea break, Dr. Lakhanpal said the birth of a child is often an economic decision for many of her patients, another pair of hands to eventually work and bring money for the family. “They think more kids means more hands to help out,” she said. “They don’t realize there are more mouths to feed.” Indeed, different Indian states and districts have been introducing different incentive programs for years to try to slow the national birth rate, even as government-mandated family planning remains a very controversial issue. “For each individual family it’s a matter of celebration (to have children.) But natural resources are limited. If population keeps increasing, not everyone will have enough to eat and live,” said Dr. Asha Aggarwal, the head of gynecology and obstetrics at the hospital. “Have fewer children, but healthier children.”