Thousands lost their only children in the Sichuan disaster. Photo / Reuters
China has sent medical teams to offer reverse sterilisation operations to women who lost children in last month's Sichuan earthquake but want to give birth again, state media reported.
Under China's one-child family planning policy, parents are allowed only one child in most cases and mothers are often
encouraged to have sterilisation surgery after giving birth.
However, a medical team is being dispatched to the quake-hit region to conduct a reverse-sterilisation procedure on women who want it, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.
Zhang Shikun, a senior official with China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, said it would provide surgery free of charge to women in quake-hit areas.
"The team, comprising experts on childbearing, will conduct surgery in the quake-hit areas to provide technological support for those wanting to give birth to another [child]," she was quoted as saying.
The death toll from the 8.0magnitude quake which struck the southwestern region on May 12 stands at around 70,000 people. A further 18,000 are listed as missing.
The Sichuan provincial Population and Family Planning Commission has estimated that among the dead 7000 are the only children of their families.
Many of the children were killed as their school buildings collapsed around them, raising the anger of parents about construction safety standards. Babies are constantly sought-after in China as the Government banned most parents from having more than one child nearly three decades ago in an attempt to rein in growth of the country's population.
The policy has resulted in 400 million fewer births, according to the Government.
At more than 1.3 billion people, China has the world's largest population.
