Nearly 98 per cent of the sterilisations performed in India in 2017-18 were on women, the Rajya Sabha was told today
Union Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel said of the total 35,68,409 sterilisation procedures conducted between 2017-18, only 1.61 per cent were male sterilisation, while 98.39 were female sterilisation.
Bihar recorded the highest number of female sterilisations at 4,74,071, followed by Maharashtra at 4,04,178, Gujarat at 3,24,284 and Karnataka at 3,06,232. In Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka, 2,576; 11,629; 2,203 and 912 men underwent sterilisation process respectively.
Madhya Pradesh registered 2,99,274 female sterilisations, followed by Tamil Nadu (2,55,858), Rajasthan (2,45,965) and Andhra Pradesh (1,92,678). The number of male sterilisations in these four states were 3,727; 2,401; 2,559 and 1,153 respectively. In Delhi, 16,514 women and 491 men underwent sterilisation.
In her response, Patel said the government had not commissioned any study on the reasons for this disparity as the family-planning programme in the country was voluntary in nature and the government promotes all family-planning choices equally.
It is the prerogative of the clients to choose a family-planning method as per their reproductive rights and the government provides the services free of cost in all public health and accredited private/ NGO facilities as per the demand, the minister said.
The initiatives undertaken by the government to promote male sterilisation includes 'Vasectomy Fortnight', which is being observed in November every year across the country to raise awareness. Moreover, training of service providers in no scalpel vasectomy (NSV) are being conducted to enhance the pool of service providers, Patel said.
Under the enhanced compensation scheme for sterilisation, the compensation for male sterilisation has been substantially increased. A 360-degree media campaign has been rolled out to encourage men to adopt family planning methods, she added.
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