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Tanya Ashnigdh, who is in her fourth month of pregnancy, cooks at her home in Muzaffarpur.
New Delhi, India:
Tanya Ashnigdh is four months pregnant and frightened, one of millions of pregnant women excluded from India’s failing vaccination campaign despite a greater risk of Covid-19.
In a country with shaky health services, childbirth has always been risky and the recent devastating wave of coronavirus has made matters worse.
Ashnigdh, 31, lives in Muzaffarpur in Bihar. Like other cities, it has been ravaged by the pandemic, and the state’s decrepit public hospitals have struggled to cope with the spike in cases.
She cannot get the vaccine due to government policy, with authorities citing a lack of data.
And she was afraid to go for a checkup in case she caught the virus at the crowded local clinic.
“We were the last in the queue,” Ashnigdh told AFP.
“There are so many risks in going out … I’m also scared of having an ultrasound so I don’t even know when my baby is due.”
– Shallow breathing –
There is no official data, but doctors say that in the recent outbreak, which was blamed in part on new variants of the virus, the number of pregnant women falling ill was notable.
Even before the pandemic, India’s maternal mortality rate was 113 per 100,000 live births in 2016-18, compared to seven in Britain in 2017.
A study by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which analyzed 400,000 women aged 15 to 44 with Covid-19, showed that pregnancy increases the risk of serious illness if they catch the virus.
“As the belly gets bigger and bigger, the lungs don’t expand very well and breathing becomes shallow in pregnant women,” gynecologist Ranjana Sharma from Apollo Hospital in New Delhi told AFP.
“And as we know, Covid affects the lungs – it (breathing) becomes all the more difficult for them. They are also at increased risk of blood clotting.”
Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics found a higher risk of preterm labor and other complications from Covid-19.
With 27 million births each year, the Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology Societies of India believes that the “very real benefits” of vaccinations outweigh the risks.
The government says a lack of data prevents them from doing so, but doctors are pointing to other countries that allow vaccinations for pregnant women, such as the United States and Britain.
However, expectant mothers in these countries are advised to take the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna injections, neither of which are available in India. It deploys the AstraZeneca and Bharat Biotech jabs.
– ‘Dead before you see baby’ –
Pregnant women in India also find it difficult to see a doctor.
Kumari Kajal, 30, who is due to arrive in August, said she felt weak and had a lot of pain in her legs.
“But the doctor refused to see me and asked me to speak to his assistant,” she told AFP.
“The doctors themselves are scared and insist (I have a) negative corona test every time.”
The case of Anshuma Chauhan in Delhi, eight months pregnant with her first child, ended in tragedy.
Chauhan was asked to self-isolate at home after contracting the disease in April when hospitals were overwhelmed with cases.
Doctors feared that the drugs used to treat Covid-19 “could harm her baby,” her sister Dhriti Gupta told AFP.
Chauhan’s condition worsened and she was rushed to a private hospital where an emergency Cesarean was performed. Hours later, the hospital moved her elsewhere, saying she needed advanced treatment.
“We weren’t even allowed to see her once. When she got to the other hospital (…) we were told she had died 18 to 20 hours earlier,” Gupta said. .
“She was only 30 years old and passed away without even seeing her baby … We are so angry and traumatized. We just don’t want no one else to have to suffer like her.”
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