India's Orissa halts 'bicycle pump sterilisation surgery'
3 December 2014
An Indian state has halted mass sterilisations at health camps after a doctor was found using a bicycle pump to inflate women's abdomens.
Dr Mahesh Chandra Rout, who used a pump on 56 women last Friday, told the BBC pumps were regularly used in Orissa.
State officials said carbon dioxide should be used for the procedure, and using pumps could be dangerous.
Last month, a separate scandal erupted over sterilisations when 15 women died after operations in another state.
Tainted drugs were blamed for the botched surgeries in Chhattisgarh state.
Sterilisation camps are frequently held to carry out mass tubectomy operations on women in India as part of an effort to control the country's booming population.
