No Awareness Regarding Family Planning: 55-Year-Old Udaipur Woman Gives Birth To 17th Child

An incident has surfaced from Udaipur, Rajasthan that raises concerns over the lack of awareness regarding family planning amongst the people. 55-year-old Rekha Kalbelia, wife of Kavara Ram Kalbelia, has given birth to her 17th child at the Community Health Centre in Jhadol block of Rajasthan’s Udaipur district. Rekha and her husband Kavara have embraced parenthood 17 times over the years. Of these 17 children, only 12 survives: seven sons and five daughters while the other five, four boys and one girl, died shortly after birth, as reported in the IANS. 

Kavara said that his two sons and three daughters are married and they have two to three children each. Apart from being a mother, this has made Rekha a grandmother many times over as well, even before the birth of her youngest child.

Similar incident reported in 2019

An almost similar incident was reported in 2019 when an aged Andhra Pradesh couple Mangayamma, 74, and her husband Raja Rao, 80 had made it to the news headlines after becoming parents to twin girls. The aged couple had tried to conceive for years and eventually, they opted for IVF in 2018. Mangayamma then embraced parenthood in January 2019, after the first cycle of the IVF procedure. A team of doctors had monitored Mangayamma’s general health, nutrition and cardiac health over the subsequent months. She had given birth to twins on September 5, 2019 at a hospital in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur.

Why the incidents of parents embracing parenthood at an elder age is concerning?

The cases where the people become parents at an elder age is alarming because of several concerns, including physical, mental and emotional factors. People will not be able to devote ample time for the upbringing of a child as they will be looking after their health as well. There is also a concern regarding looking after the child after the parents are not able to care for him or her due to their age-related complexions. 

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