Indian authorities are investigating allegations rusty equipment was used to carry out sterilisation surgery on 13 women who died after being operated on over the weekend.
Many of the 80 women who had surgery at the sterilisation camp in the central Indian state of Chhatisgath remain in hospital.
Local government officials said the cause of the deaths is not yet known, but the women showed signs of toxic shock.
“Preliminary reports show that the medicines administered were spurious and also the equipment used was rusted,” senior local government official Siddharth Komal Singh Pardeshi said.
The doctor who carried out the surgeries, R.K Gupta, has denied responsibility for the deaths and blames them on medicine the women received when they returned to their homes.
He has been accused of operating on more than 80 women in just a few hours with the help of two assistants in an abandoned private hospital, contravening government guidelines to limit such operations to 30 a day.
He has been sacked and a criminal investigation is underway.
All the women have been hospitalised for observation and 20 are in critical condition, with many not responding to treatment, doctors said.
The camps are common in India where sterilisation is a popular way to control the nation’s billion plus population.
Sterilisation is the most popular form of birth control and the government provides cash and other incentives to encourage men and women to undergo the operation.
ABC/Reuters