Human Rights and Emergency Obstetric Care

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Human Rights and Emergency Obstetric Care
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Why Use a Human Rights Approach to Reduce
Maternal Mortality?

• Human rights are international standards that
  governments have accepted as binding upon them
  and in their countries
• Human rights identify the forces that keep
  unacceptable things from changing
• Human rights means using a different vision of
  human well-being to call for the re-arrangements
  of power necessary for change

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Examples of Human Rights-Related Problems Before
and During Pregnancy

• Unwanted pregnancy due to lack of access to
  contraception
• Unsafe abortion
• Complications during pregnancy
• Delay in seeking care Lack of information about
  when and where to go for care, low status of
  women, poverty
• Delay in getting to the appropriate facility
  Poor transportation and communication
  infrastructure
• Delay in receiving care Attitudes of healthcare
  providers, expensive drugs, equipment and supplies

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Basic Principles and Values of a Human Rights
Approach

• Every person, whether woman, man, or child,
  deserves to be
• treated with dignity
• Dignity in health is not only about preventing
  death and disease, but also about the way
  individuals, communities and societies obtain and
  maintain a standard of health

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How to Apply Human Rights Principles to Maternal
Mortality Reduction

• Right to Health Every person has the right to
  the highest attainable standard of physical and
  mental health.Article 12, International
  Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
• Realizing the Right To comply with the
  obligation to fulfill the right to health, states
  must take appropriate measures toward the
  progressive realization of the right, and must
  do so to the maximum of available resources
• Appropriate measure Emergency obstetric care

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Using Human Rights Principles in Maternal
Mortality Programs

• Human rights can affect health programs on
  multiple levels
• Individual Change the way patients and providers
  are treated
• Institutional Help facility function better
  through community involvement
• Systemic Address global influential factors

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Human Rights in the Clinical Setting

• Availability of human resources, equipment and
  drugs
• How services are delivered
• Dignity Privacy and respect
• Non-discrimination Eliminating social and
  cultural barriers that limit access to care
• Identify which actions violate these rights

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AMDD Approach to Human Rights

• Identify the human rights laws and the principles
  and values that underlie them
• Ask how these laws/principles/values would change
  the way that a facility functions
• Identify concrete actions needed to make such
  functioning possible

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Whole-site Approach

• All human interactions in the facility matter
• How do we create the enabling conditions that
  make respect for human rights possible?
• Focus on BOTH patients AND providers

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Enabling Conditions
x
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Universal Access to Emergency Obstetric Care

• Fulfilling the right to health means working
  progressively toward universal access to
  emergency obstetric care

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Role Play

• Group 1 Skit of an ideal interaction between
  patient and provider(s) showing respect for human
  rights
• Group 2 Skit of an interaction between patient
  and provider(s) in which, from a human rights
  perspective, everything goes wrong