Rights corner
India: Reveal Truth about Childbirth Deaths
India is falling behind other countries in meeting international commitments to improve obstetric care because it does not adequately monitor deaths and injuries in the critical period following childbirth and fix gaps in its health system and programs, Human Rights Watch said.
Representatives from around the world met on October 26, 2009, to review and reaffirm international goals for sexual and reproductive health, including maternal health. Public health experts say that the key to progress in maternal health is ensuring that women with pregnancy complications are able to get appropriate care during childbirth. But Human Rights Watch research shows this is not happening in India even though it has started healthcare programs that guarantee free obstetric care to rural women.
"India should be a leader in protecting and monitoring women's sexual and reproductive health," said Aruna Kashyap, researcher for the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. "Yet women continue to die entirely preventable deaths, and health authorities do not track down the reasons or do what is needed to rectify the health system."
The government counts the number of births in health clinics and hospitals, but these are often woefully under-resourced and under-staffed. Many women die or suffer serious injury after giving birth under these circumstances. The Indian government does not monitor what happens to women after childbirth, especially in the following 24 to 72 critical hours, when the chances of dying are the highest. Without this information, it cannot save women who go back home and die or develop long-lasting complications.
The Indian government should change its approach to monitoring and examine whether women with pregnancy-related complications are in fact getting the kind of treatment they need and whether they are surviving childbirth in the postpartum period. The Indian government's new Health Management Information System includes some of this data for monitoring, but it remains to be seen whether this data will be consistently collected and utilized for maternal health care programming at district and state levels.
In the "Call to Urgent Action for Maternal Health" issued after the October 26 meeting in Addis Ababa, members of parliaments and civil society representatives from across the world reaffirmed their commitment to goals set out in the landmark 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). Key goals include providing universal access to sexual and reproductive health care to all women, reducing preventable deaths from childbirth and unsafe abortions, monitoring implementation, and reporting on progress both locally and globally. India was at this meeting and reaffirmed its commitment to these goals.
Source: Human Rights Watch.
