Four Indian women die after sterilisation

NEW DELHI: Four women have died and nine others were hospitalised after undergoing sterilisation at a government-run medical camp in India, an official said on Wednesday.

India has been running sterilisation programmes for almost seven decades to control its burgeoning population, but the family planning scheme has often run into controversies such as botched surgeries or coercion including when millions were forcefully operated on in the 1970s.

A medical officer in the southern state of Telangana said more than three dozen women were operated on at a state-run sterilisation camp last Thursday and four of them died over the weekend due to suspected sepsis.