A pregnant woman who was unable to give birth naturally delivered a dismembered baby at Kengtung Hospital in eastern Shan State on 13 June after taking yama (methamphetamine) pills to facilitate the delivery, according to a source close to the hospital.
“She may not have taken the yama pills as a drug user. She might have taken them to get the strength to give birth as she could not give birth normally. It is common knowledge that yama makes you energetic or enables you to work hard. So maybe she took the pills to get strength for the birth. If she had been able to give birth normally, this would not have happened,” the source said.
The mother is in her 30s and from Mongping Township. She took the yama pills because she was unable to give birth to her child. She was taken to hospital for an emergency birth with the help of a doctor, and the baby was dismembered and dead.
In the villages of Kengtung and Mongping Townships, local people work only agriculture. Due to their low income, lack of health education and language barriers, they are dependent on traditional birth attendants for deliveries.
These traditional birth attendants themselves lack knowledge about childbirth and promote harmful practices such as consuming alcohol or yama during labor or having two people press on the abdomen with a bamboo staff to push the baby out. This often leads to maternal and infant deaths, according to local sources with health knowledge.
A local woman who was trained as a midwife said, “They don’t even know how to hold and handle the baby properly during delivery. Despite the formal training, I even found it difficult to apply what I have learned in real life. So it must be much worse for them. They just deliver without any imaging or monitoring of the baby’s condition.”
In this case, the baby died, but the mother’s condition is stable and she can probably be discharged after about 5 days of treatment.
However, the source close to the hospital said the mother is worried because she needs financial support and may face legal action.
Sent by NMG.