This week the world marked the second International Day for Maternal Health and Rights. High time the world paid attention to maternal health given that even today, in circa 2016, a woman dies in childbirth every two minutes. Clearly there is a need to promote and set up a comprehensive and rights-based approach to maternal health.
These rights are abused in many different ways, be it in terms of lack of access to quality health care during pregnancy, lack of information on birth control and availability of methods, or the abuse and disrespect that women are subject to during pregnancy and childbirth in hospitals and primary health centres.
Applying a human rights-based approach requires policy makers and health care providers to see women not as clients or patients or victims, but as those whose rights should be maintained and upheld in the context of health care.
It’s an approach that has been missing in the Indian government’s single-minded focus on increasing institutional deliveries. Broader sexual and reproductive health issues like access to safe abortion, setting up of adolescent friendly services, access to pap smears and mammograms, and promoting gender equity in family planning have been mostly neglected.
While nationwide surveys may show the maternal deaths rate declining, the statistics bury some hard realities. Anemia, which has a direct bearing on maternal health, continues to affect over 55% of Indian women. The poor and the marginalized face discrimination from healthcare providers. Caste continues to dictate access to immunization and other factors that help determine safer pregnancies.
These are factors that cannot be addressed by simply increasing the number of hospitals, healthcare providers or contraceptive choices. While structural changes like building stronger health systems makes a difference, maternal mortality is closely linked to development and cultural factors that are harder to change. Parts of the bigger picture may have shown some improvement, but what is missing is a rights based approach.
