After three years of promoting natural delivery as an alternative to Cesarean section births, Taipei's Veterans General Hospi-tal yesterday released results showing initial success in decreasing the number of C-section births.
"The Cesarean rate at Veterans General has dropped from 36.7 percent in 1996 to 29.3 percent in 1999," obstetrician Chiu Lung-mao (邱隆茂) said yesterday.
"We want to tell the public that women's abdomens are not made for Cesarean operations."
Among the highest rates in the world
According to the Department of Health, the Cesarean rate in Taiwan was 33 percent in 1998, ranking Taiwan among the top three in the world in terms of c-section births.
"A lower rate of Cesarean births is considered to be an international criterion of development," Hung Jeng-hsiu (洪正修), director of the obstetrician department at Veterans General.
Although Taiwan is a newly developed country, it "is as underdeveloped as Brazil and Bangladesh in this respect,"he added.
"Cesareans should be an emergency therapy, not a method for normal deliveries."
Veterans General launched a campaign to promote natural delivery in 1997 in hopes that they could decrease Cesarean births for women's health and a better mother-newborn baby relationship.
Women who receive a Cesarean suffer post-operation pain for a week and hence have difficultly breastfeeding, while women who give birth naturally recover within three days and breastfeed newborn babies without any problem, Hung said.
Out of almost 900 pregnant women, 140 who were suitable and willing switched to natural delivery. Out of the 140, 75 percent or 105 pregnant women were successful.
"The main factor of failure in the other 35 women was because they gave up trying halfway through delivery because of unexpected delivery pain," said Chiu.
Awareness increases procedure
The number of c-sections began to soar in the 1970s, when rising consciousness of patients' rights put doctors on guard to carry out quick and effective deliveries, and women also hoped to avoid the pain of delivery.
Cesareans were popularized by American doctor Edward Cragin whose motto was: "Once a Cesarean, always a Cesarean."
The main worry for practicing natural delivery is the possible rupture of the womb since there has been a Cesarean scar in the abdomen.
"The risk of womb rupture is around 0.2 percent to 1.5 percent and usually happens just before delivery and is easy to deal with the risk is no higher than common natural delivery," Chiu said.
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