Man walked 40 km through forest with pregnant wife on his shoulders

In an effort to save his pregnant wife and their child, a man walked 40km through hilly forest in Kerala, south India, during heavy rains carrying the ailing woman on his shoulders to get her to a hospital, but failed to save the baby. Ayyappan and his wife, Sudha, left their home in Konni forest on Friday morning. When Sudha could walk no more, Ayyappan fashioned a sling from a piece of cloth and carried her on his back, before managing to get a jeep to take his wife to hospital.

But Ayyappan succeeded only partially as the doctors found the six-month-old fetus lifeless. “He might have failed to save his child, but he could save his wife,” Kunjamma Roy, Head of the Department of Gynecology at the Kottayam Government Medical College Hospital, said. When the woman was brought to the hospital, she had edema, high blood pressure and convulsions, Dr Roy added.

Ayyappan, a tribal man living deep in the Konni forests in Pathanamthitta district, married Sudha more than eight months ago. “We were living with Sudha’s father and two sisters,” he said. His relatives lived some distance away in the forest. When Sudha became pregnant, there was no doctor anywhere around whom they could consult. Recently she developed fever and we met a homeo doctor,” Ayyappan said.

“Last week her body developed swelling, and she developed convulsions. I had no other way but to carry her to Kokkathode, a town nearby. It was a day’s walk away. We started early in the morning when it was raining heavily, but I was more concerned about wild elephants. We reached Kokkathode in the evening, and a kind man took us to Konni in his vehicle. From there we went to the Pathanamthitta District Hospital in a jeep,” Ayyappan said. According to doctors, Sudha’s condition is now improving.