Children around the world love to play doctor, but a 15-year-old boy in a town in southern India has shocked the medical world by performing a caesarean section in a hospital run by his parents, who wanted their son’s name in the Guinness book of world records.
Dhileepan Raj, a schoolboy in Manapparai town in Tamil Nadu state, was filmed by his proud father, a general surgeon, while performing the surgery on a 20-year-old woman to deliver her baby, keenly watched by his gynaecologist mother.
The father, K Murugesan, even screened the video to doctors at a meeting of the Indian Medical Association in Manapparai on May 6, although it is unclear when the surgery took place.
Mr Murugesan and his wife, Dr M Gandhimathi, run the Mathi surgical and maternity hospital in the town.
Last year, another surgeon in Tamil Nadu created a storm by attempting to get into the Guinness World Records by performing 50 hernia operations in 24 hours at a private hospital in the state capital, Chennai. He was trying to beat the world record of 41 hernia surgeries in 13 hours 41 minutes and 19 seconds.
The Tamil Nadu state government has ordered an inquiry into Dhileepan Raj’s antics, although Mr Murugesan now claims his son “only watched out of curiosity” while he himself performed the caesarean section.
Both Mr Murugesan and his wife were questioned by a government official on Thursday. “If the incident is true, it amounts to endangering human life,” the official, Ashish Vachchani, said. “We will act according to the law.”
If the allegation is proved, Mr Murugesan and his wife will be barred from medical practice and also face prosecution, along with their son. “Prima facie it looks like a violation, so we will take action against the doctor and the person who did it [the operation],” the state’s health secretary, V K Subburaj, said.
Fortunately, both the mother and the child delivered by the boy surgeon seem to be doing well. The child’s grandmother told a television news channel that both her daughter, named as Neela, 27, and her grandchild were “healthy”.
