Islamabad - The childbearing women are treated with disrespect when they go to seek maternity care in public hospitals.
This involves scolding, snubbing and shouting by doctors and other staff on women passing through the critical time of giving birth to a new soul. This has been documented in a research study conducted for the first time on “respectful maternity care” in Pakistan by White Ribbon Alliance (WRA) Pakistan. The study was shared in a meeting of experts held in Islamabad.
Ihatsham Akram, the country coordinator of WRA, shared that there are policy and institutional deficits with regard to accountability on this front. The policymakers keep focusing on the strengthening the supply, that too is in tatters, without looking at the human face of the services. The research documented the experiences of women who had visited tehsil and district headquarters hospitals, civil hospitals, and rural health centres in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh.
“We are treated like animals and we don’t have anyone to tell about this” were the words of a woman who participated in the research. “We keep doctors calling but no one comes, “we don’t know what is happening to our patient in the labour room whether she is alive or dead” were some of the excerpts from the stories of women.
The meeting was attended by senior officials of health department and right to services commission, civil society activists and academia.
Huge pressure on main urban hospitals, lack of focus towards strengthening health services delivery at the grassroots level, missing of ethics education in healthcare providers curricula are some of the causes of the causes identified in the research.
The vice-president of White Ribbon Alliance Prof Dr Ghazala Mehmood urged the senior doctors to be the role models for promoting respectful care in their wards. She said the government should focus on maternal health education.
The participants in the light of the study recommended that the government should put standards in place to ensure respectful maternal healthcare in public hospitals. They also urged the government to have accountability systems in place to improve maternal healthcare service delivery, which is free of abuse and disrespect.