India’s oldest midwife demises | Fusion - WeRIndia

India’s oldest midwife who brought joy and happiness to several people demised on December 25, 2018.

Narasamma who delivered more than 15,000 babies died at the age of 98.

She did not take anything for delivering the babies.

Sulagitti Narasamma started helping in deliveries in her 20s.

After that, she continued her services for more than seven decades till her last breath.

She earned the title Sulagitti which means ‘delivery work’ in Kannada.

She was not known outside her village until 2007. Some writers identified her services and nominated her for a district-level award.

Since then, several media people started picking up her story. In 2014, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tumkur University. She became Dr Sulagitti Narasamma after 74 years of her first delivery.

Narasamma was inspired by her own grandmother, Marigemma who was a midwife as well.

She learned the art of delivering babies from her grandmother. Her grandmother helped Narasamma in delivering her own babies.

Narasamma was a resident of Krishnapura in Karnataka. Despite doing service to pregnant women in their delivery, she did not earn much recognition.

However, the government recognized her services and honoured her with Padma Shri in 2018.

Since then, her village also became popular.

She used to provide shelter to the people of nomadic tribes and learned the art of preparing natural medicines for pregnant women.

This helped her succeeding in her job. Without having a stethoscope, she could check the pulse of fetus and its health.

She even could assume the position of baby’s head. All this is done with her talent and experience.

Being a mother of 12 children, Narasamma said that groundnuts and millets are the secret of her health as she mainly depended on them.

She did not need spectacles till her death due to her good vision.

Image Reference: Thebetterindia