He says The OMS that attending to the studies and the type of childbirth care that women should receive, the cesarean section rate should be 10%, at most 15%. This means that only one in ten women should leave the hospital explaining that they have had a C-section, while the remaining nine should say they have had a vaginal delivery.
And yet there are very few hospitals that get those figures, and consequently very few countries that approach. In Spain we have the case of Basque Country, an autonomous community that is around 15% of caesarean sections. In return, there are countries like Dominican Republic, with 56% of cesarean sections, or cities like this one of which I speak today, in Argentina, that has the dubious honor of having a caesarean section rate of 70%.
Villa María, in the province of Córdoba
The city in question is Villa María, located in the center of the province of Córdoba, in Argentina, where, as we read in El Diario del Centro del País, cesarean rates reach insulting levels.
The city's own Secretary of Health, Humberto Jure, explains that the situation has reached an unusual point:
Caesarean section is a practice that should be tried to eradicate. We must be putting up the table why it happens that pregnancies that could end in normal delivery end in caesarean section. Only 30% of births occur normally, when it should be the other way around. Even 30% of C-sections would already be a lot.
A deplorable and reportable figures
According to the same newspaper, about half of women from Villa Maria It has no social work, and of these 20% arrive at childbirth without having done any type of control, having a higher risk of complications. However, this would not explain (at all) such a high C-section rate.
According to the figures, only 3 out of 10 women who go to a hospital to give birth manage to have a vaginal delivery. From this it follows that 6 out of 10 women have a C-section that they don't really need.
Such an attention can be considered deplorable (in fact all possible negative adjectives fit here) and should be denounced, because a major surgical intervention is being abused That should only be done in cases where it is really necessary.
When in one or several hospitals there are more caesarean sections than normal deliveries, what is demonstrated is that the quality of care is far from reaching the minimum required, and the logical thing would be to communicate to the population that it is not safe to give birth in these centers, so that they decide if they should look for other centers in which to have their babies, or at least so that they can make the pertinent complaints and claims.
Risks of caesarean section
A C-section is a very serious matter, because it has more complications for the woman and the baby than a normal birth. The most common risks related to this intervention are:
- Infection of the bladder or uterus, since it is a surgical intervention with wound and rupture of the uterus, which should heal.
- Injury of the urinary tract.
- Injury to the baby (we have already seen here a wound made during caesarean section).
- Increased risk of placenta previa in future pregnancies.
- Increased risk of placenta attached in future pregnancies (the placenta has trouble separating after the next delivery).
- Increased risk of uterine rupture.
- Increased risk of bleeding as a result of the three previous situations.
- Bleeding hemorrhage in the intervention area.
- That blood clots occur that reach the pelvic veins or legs.
- Wound infection.
In the rest of Argentina the alarms also jump
In case of Villa Maria It's flagrant, but it's not unique. In the rest of the country there is already an "epidemic" of caesarean sections, as Clarín said in June when he warned that he had already had a caesarean section in more than 30% of births, a figure that is increasing and already triples what is recommended by WHO.
Hopefully, this news will reflect the health professionals of Argentina, as well as those of Villa María, and especially that it awakens the conscience of fathers and mothers, who have every right to demand quality health care, and not one in which the woman and the baby are deliberately put at risk.
Photos | iStock
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