South Africa: Provide Better Services For Pregnant Women Says Amnesty International

By Staff Writer

South African government needs to strengthen its commitment to providing quality basic services to pregnant women, Amnesty International said on Thursday 9.

Amnesty International, human rights non-governmental organization proposed a list of recommendations that the government departments could put in place to decrease the rate of maternal mortality.

It urged the social services department to start providing child support grants to women before their children were born.

Louise Carmody, a researcher at amnesty while addressing the press in Johannesburg said the money would come in handy during the ante-natal period.

Carmody said pregnant women in impoverished nations needed the grant because; finding employment was difficult during pregnancy, the nutritious food needed was expensive, as is the cost of transport to clinics for ante-natal care.

Amnesty also encouraged the health department to provide more human rights education to health-care workers.

This came after many pregnant women and girls interviewed by the group complained of the conduct of healthcare workers.

"It was concerning that pregnant women thought HIV testing wasn't voluntary," said Carmody.

She claimed many of them avoided getting early ante-natal care because they feared being given the test.

"At some clinics, HIV-positive women were given distinct files," said Carmody, adding that in other places they had separate queues to receive treatment.

Women thus feared they would be discriminated against if their status was known.

Amnesty also called for the education department to start giving age-appropriate education about sexual health at school.

It also called for the health department to provide safe, reliable ambulances to ferry women to clinics, especially during childbirth.

Carmody said during their research, which was conducted in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, they found that pregnant women were encouraged to save money for private transport for use during labour.

‘Due to unavailability of ambulances to them, pregnant women are forced to save money for this special occasion which costs between R500 and R1 000," she said.

The group's research focused mainly on the two provinces as it found that they had the poorest performance indicators in the area of maternal health and access to sexual, reproductive, and maternal health services.

According to Amnesty International, the maternal mortality rate in South Africa stood at 269 deaths per 100 000 live births.

Amnesty International general secretary Salil Shetty described the figures as shocking.

Government could not say it did not have enough resources to address the matter, Shetty said.

Giving birth is widely regarded as the best moment amongst families’ around the world, but in Africa it has become a nightmare, as mothers and unborn children die every day during delivery,  reflecting inequities in access to health services, highlighting the gap between rich and poor.

World Health Organization statistics show maternal mortality is unacceptably high with approximately 800 women dying from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth daily, of which more than half of 99% of all the deaths in the developing world occurs in sub-Saharan Africa due to low-resource settings and most, could have been prevented.

However, between 1990 and 2013, the global maternal mortality ratio - the number of maternal deaths per 100 000 live births- declined by only 2.6% per year.