‘Stop Making Excuses’ / Accountability for Maternal Health Care in South Africa
JOHANNESBURG, South-Africa, July 29, 2011/African Press Organization (APO)/ — Human Rights Watch is pleased to invite you to the launch of a new report, “‘Stop Making Excuses’: Accountability for Maternal Health Care in South Africa,” to be held on Monday, August 8, 2011, at 9:30 a.m.
Maternity patients seeking care in public health facilities in Eastern Cape, South Africa, have been physically and verbally abused, turned away from clinics and hospitals without examination while in labor, ignored by nurses when they call for help, made to wait hours or even days for care, left unattended for long periods after delivery, discharged inappropriately, or even sent home without pain medication or antibiotics, sometimes after Cesarean births. Refugee women face these problems two-fold. Based on interviews with 157 women, health workers, experts, government officials, and visits to 16 health facilities, the report details problems with the tools used by health authorities to identify and correct these and other health system failures, and to reduce South Africa’s high maternal mortality ratio that has quadrupled in the last decade. The report urges the South Africa national and Eastern Cape provincial governments to take immediate steps to strengthen health system oversight and accountability in order to ensure women’s safe and dignified maternity care.
What: Release of the Human Rights Watch report, “‘Stop Making Excuses’:
Accountability for Maternal Health Care in South Africa”
Who: Agnes Odhiambo, Africa Researcher, Women’s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch
Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi, South Africa Minister of Health
Professor Busi Bhengu, Chairperson of Laws & Practice Standards Committee, South African Nursing Council
A woman to share her experience of maternity care
When: Monday, August 8, 2011, 9:30 a.m.
Where: The Grace Hotel in Rosebank,
54 Bath Avenue, Rosebank,
Sandton,
Gauteng, South Africa
For more Human Rights Watch reporting on South Africa, please visit: http://www.hrw.org/en/africa/south-africa
For more Human Rights Watch reporting on women’s rights, please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/category/topic/women
Note to journalists: Copies of the report will be available at the news conference. The full report is embargoed until the news conference.
SOURCE
Human Right Watch (HRW)
