A tribal woman, hailing from a hilltop village of Kodu, gave birth by the roadside on Monday at around 4:00 am, when an ambulance couldn’t reach her due to poor road conditions. Vasantha, a 28-year-old woman, went into labor around 4 am on a Monday. Her husband, Bhaskara Rao, promptly contacted emergency services. An ambulance was dispatched around 6 am, but it was forced to stop a kilometer away from the village due to the absence of a road. The event took place in Chidivalasa, a tribal hamlet under the jurisdiction of the Peddakota panchayat in the Ananthagiri mandal of Andhra Pradesh’s Alluri Sitarama Raju District.
Despite her family’s attempts to call an ambulance via the 108 service, the vehicle was unable to reach them due to the area’s poor road network.
Asha workers and local women attempted to carry Vasantha to the ambulance. However, before they could reach it, the tribal woman had to stop as her labor pains intensified, and she gave birth to a baby girl – her third child – on the roadside. After the delivery, Vasantha was bleeding heavily. She was then taken to the Upper Primary Hospital in Hukumpeta Mandal, where she received medical assistance from the 108 team.
The incident was also covered on the social media platform, X:
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) National General Secretary, Nara Lokesh also reacted to the incident on X, alleging that the tribal children are suffering due to the negligence of the government. Locals said that in 2017, a road was granted to the village through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and funds were allocated. However, work only began in 2023 and subsequently stopped midway (Source: Deccan Chronicle).
In a similar incident in 2023 in the Alluri Sitarama Raju District, a tribal woman gave birth to a baby boy in a forest while on her way to a nearby hospital. She had to walk for three kilometres before an ambulance could arrive.
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