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Govt maternity hospitals in Hyderabad delivering when it matters

Government maternity hospitals conducted safe deliveries for more than 100 Covid positive pregnant women in a month

By M. Sai Gopal

Updated On - 11 May 2021, 12:29 AM

Govt maternity hospitals in Hyderabad delivering when it matters — A health worker collecting nasal swab for Covid-19 test at the Government Fever Hospital, in Nallakunta, in Hyderabad on Monday. — Photo: Surya Sridhar

Hyderabad: Management of Covid positive pregnant women is complicated and needs a lot of careful planning to ensure a safe delivery. Adopting such protocols, government maternity hospitals in Hyderabad have been helping pregnant women deliver safely during the second wave of the pandemic.

So far, government maternity hospitals at Petlaburj, Sultanbazaar, Niloufer Hospital and the special Maternity and Paediatric unit at Gandhi Hospital have conducted safe deliveries for more than 100 pregnant women who had tested positive for Covid. At Niloufer Hospital alone, in the last one month, doctors guided nearly 50 pregnant women who had tested positive to deliver safely. The senior obstetricians and gynaecologists at Petlaburj Maternity Hospital too have helped at least 20 Covid positive pregnant women deliver without complications.

“We have learnt a lot about Covid-19 in the past one year. There are fool-proof Covid protocols on providing safe medical services to pregnant women. Almost all the pregnant women are aware of the critical nature of Covid and they too are taking precautions,” says Professor, Obstetrics, Niloufer Hospital, Dr Anita Siddu.

Last year, Gandhi Hospital was the only facility that had a special Covid ward for pregnant women who contracted the virus. However, this year, all the maternity hospitals including Sultanbazaar, Petlaburj and Niloufer Hospital have exclusive Covid wards for pregnant women. To ensure early detection of Covid, pregnant women also undergo rapid antigen tests at the local Primary and Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHCs) during their regular visits. Special focus is on identifying high-risk woman who have anaemia and other pre-existing medical conditions and guide them through the pregnancy safely.

“In the last one month, we have safely delivered about 100 babies without any instance of infections. The entire hospital staff is accustomed to Covid protocols because we have been handling pregnancies for over a year,” says Superintendent, Petlaburj Maternity Hospital Dr K Naga Mani. In case pregnant women test positive, they are kept in the special Covid ward for recovery and then delivery is taken up.

“We have hybrid protocols in place at the hospital aimed at taking care of non-Covid and Covid pregnant women at every stage. A lot of counselling is also given to pregnant women on ways to keep themselves safe while they are at home. If the pregnant woman tested positive at a very late stage, then we go ahead with the delivery because that can be done safely, the senior obstetricians said.

Last year, during the entire course of the pandemic, there was no significant drop in the number of pregnancies across State-run maternity hospitals. At the same time, so far there have been no major instances of surge in Covid infections at any of the government tertiary maternity care facilities.