UAE hospitals in labour over C-section requests

Published Wednesday, December 12, 2012

By Majorie van Leijen

With an unusual number of requests from pregnant women who want to have their delivery scheduled on the unique date of 12-12-12, the debate arises whether this practice is ethical or not.

There are special dates in history and today is one of them.

In the UAE an unusual number of women have requested to give birth on this day, by means of a C-section.

But not all hospitals support the practice.

“We do not accept any such request,” says Suresh Menon, Medical Director of Lifeline Hospital & Lifeline Clinics.

“Unless there is a case of emergency and there is a definite medical indication of risk to life of the baby or the mother involved, we do not schedule for a C-section procedure.

According to the medical director birth is a natural process which should not be disturbed if not needed. “The human body should be left alone” he argues.

Initially, the C-section was introduced as a procedure that is carried out when the life or health of the mother or baby’s life at risk. But over the years it has increasingly become a conscious decision of mothers, who based on various grounds want to plan their birth.

“There has been a trend over the past couple of years of women wanting to plan their birth,” says Leon Du Preez, Medical Director of Medi Clinic City Hospital Dubai.

“Provided there is not a reason not to plan for the birth we do accept requests for C-sections on particular days,” he says, adding that there are quite some appointments scheduled for tomorrow.

“We house trusted obstetricians at our hospitals and they carry out ethical practices when it comes to this. We know our positions are ethical,” Leon says.

Unethical would be a C-section carried out when the fetus is premature, which is any age below 38 weeks, he argues. “The mother should be close to term.”

But according to Suresh there are considerable negative effects attached to a C-section. “In case of a natural birth the bonding between a mother and the fetus is stronger,” he explains.

“Furthermore, the mother needs 7-10 days to recover from the procedure and she will experience a lot of pain. We do not want to promote such pain” he says.

Leon does not think there are considerable health risks. “It is a safe form of giving birth. The mother is awake during the procedure, so I do not think it influences the bonding. And the pain is mostly considerably reduced on the day after.”

Government hospitals in the UAE are unlikely to support the planned C-section on days like today.

“We as a government hospital we do not accept requests for a planned C-section. We could not deal with an overload of procedures on one day anyway. Our capacity is to deal with 4-8 procedures per day,” said Khalid Khalfan, Medical Director of Al Qassimi Hospital, Sharjah.

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)

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