Patna hospital 37 ‘muhurat deliveries’

Patna’s Shivam Srijan hospital in Kankerbagh, one of the pioneers in “muhurat deliveries”, witnessed the birth of 37 children on the historic day of the consecration of Ram temple at Ayodhya, hospital administrators said on Monday.

Mediversal Maatri in Patna’s Rajendra Nagar recorded four such elective deliveries, according to its human resources manager Isha Aishwarya.

“All four babies were born through Caesarean or C-section (surgical delivery of a baby through an incision in the mother’s abdomen and uterus), between 11.30 am and 12.31pm, coinciding with the ‘pran pratishtha’ at the Ram temple in Ayodhya on Monday,” said Aiswharya.

However, at the Shivam Srijan hospital,31 of the total 37 deliveries during the day were normal.

“Only six deliveries were through C-section deliveries due to medical reasons,” said Dr Sharika Roy, a gynaecologist at the hospital.

Shiv Shankar, 27, a government contractor with the public health and engineering department, and his wife Neha Kumari, 25, a homemaker, became parent to their first child, a baby boy, at 12.31 pm.

“We are going to name our son Raghava, which is another name of Lord Ram,” said Shankar. “We wanted our son to be born today. As luck would have it, my wife had to be operated and the child taken out due to medical reasons.”

The Shivam hospital has been the trendsetter in “muhurat deliveries” for over the last decade in Bihar. During Janmashtami last year, it set a unique record of delivering the most number of 62 deliveries in a single day, said Dr Roy.

“We offer patients who are medically fit the choice to deliver their babies on special days like the Eid, Christmas, Navami or Janmashtami, etc. We then plan and work on our patients a week or 10 days in advance of the due date or after and tryi for a normal delivery. We never force a patient for elective C-section delivery and do it only when it is medically required,” said an ebullient Dr Roy.

Four elective deliveries, of which three were C-section, were also recorded at the Patna’s Ruban Memorial Women and Children Hospital and one C-section at its hospital in Rajgir.

However, government hospitals in Patna like the Patna Medical College Hospital, the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, the Nalanda Medical College Hospital and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences did not have any such elective deliveries.

“We do not allow deliveries on patient’s request. It is not in the interest of the patient or the baby to tinker with the delivery date,” said Dr Usha Kumar, principal of the Nalanda Medical College Hospital, who was earlier officiating as the head of its obstetrics and gynaecology department.