Karauli, India
Farm labourer Dharmendra Meena’s first year of marriage with his wife Vaijanti in northwest India was “beautiful and carefree.” But their first pregnancy changed everything. First came the infection during childbirth, then the stark choice presented by a visiting doctor: undergo a “life-saving” hysterectomy – the removal of her uterus and ovaries – or die. The couple took a loan of 100,000 rupees ($1,400) to cover the procedure, trapping Dharmendra in slave labour and joining thousands of people in rural India estimated to have been duped by unscrupulous doctors into having unnecessary hysterectomies.
A Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation found many women – often young – targeted by doctors whom medical experts say seek to profit by prescribing the surgery for minor ailments, with the operation and later costs driving families into debt. Having a hysterectomy brought on the menopause for Vaijanti, also a farm labourer, then aged 19, while Dharmendra was forced to work on the money lender’s farm for long hours and low pay as he tried to clear his debt – becoming a victim of debt bondage.
He ended up having to do other jobs and take more loans to support his wife and child, and now – seven years after the surgery – earns less than the monthly interest of 6,000 rupees. “The interest on the loan is rising every month,” Dharmendra told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, sitting in a sparse hut next to his wife in Taroli, a village in the state of Rajasthan. “We don’t sleep any more. We fear the money lender,” he said before Vaijanti listed their losses – the wedding jewellery they sold, her fertility, his freedom and their hopes for the future.
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