The World Health Organization (2018) defines respectful maternity care as “care organized for and provided to all women in a manner that maintains their dignity, privacy and confidentiality, ensures freedom from harm and mistreatment, and enables informed choice and continuous support during labor and childbirth.” However, the COVID-19 has posed challenges that led to changes in the delivery of respectful maternity care. As different policies aiming to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus had to be adopted, violations of the client’s rights to health, information, and non-discrimination have unfortunately arisen.
Two of the recent changes to maternity care include reducing the number of patients’ in-person visits, and certain medical interventions being more likely to be performed on women who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 during labor and delivery. The first of the changes, although not shown to result in worse outcomes, is exclusive of those impacted by the “digital divide” due to the reliance on telehealth for prenatal care. Aside from this, the newborn child is temporarily separated from their mother who tested positive for the virus. This results not only in the discouragement of skin-to-skin contact between the child and the mother, but also limits breastfeeding. For the second recent change, examples of these interventions are the induction of labor, instrumental deliveries, and cesarean deliveries, all of which have no clear medical justification. Thankfully, at the time the article was written, many health facilities have already lifted restrictions and the American Academy of Pediatrics has reversed their earlier guidance of separating newborns from women who test positive for SARS-CoV-2.
The authors of the article emphasized that “pregnant women have the right to receive respectful maternity care and not be subject to policies and practices that result in the violation of their human rights.” The different policies, practices, and guidelines that are to be applied to maternity care ought to be based on international human rights standards, best clinical practices, and the latest scientific evidence available as this is the way to uphold respectful maternity care.
Article:
Reingold, R. B., Barbosa, I., & Mishori, R. (2020). Respectful maternity care in the context of Covid‐19: A human rights perspective. International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, 151(3), 319–321. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijgo.13376