kedAranAtha-dAsaH

Source: TW

While we remember Neel Ratan Sarkar, BC Roy, today we hv completely forgotten the person responsible for decrease in maternal death rate of Indian women. Sir Kedarnath Das. For this he designed a long curved obstetric forcep, known as ‘Bengal forcep’. Today’s his birthday (Feb 24)… He was born in Kolkata 156 years ago today. Losing his mother at a young age inspired him to study medicine.

At that time, Simpson forcep was used to deliver Indian children. But in reality it was seen that often a deep wound form in the vagina, which in many cases resulted in mothers’ death. Dr. Das showed that stature of Indian women is smaller than their European counterpart. Simpson forceps were created in Britain keeping European women in mind. So using it on comparatively smaller Indian women is causing their death.

He developed a special forceps keeping in mind the pelvic curve of Indian women and the head size of Indian children. This is known as Bengal forceps. After his discovery, the maternal mortality rate in India decreased a lot. Bengal Forceps👇. Besides, he made two types of knives, a special tweezer called Axis Traction Tweezers and dilators for use by doctors. It later became known as the KD dilator. These devices developed by him became a great success after they came into use.