Women in Burkina Faso dying because of discrimination
(Ouagadougou) Women are dying needlessly during pregnancy and childbirth because discrimination prevents them from accessing sexual and reproductive health services, leaving them unable to make key decisions on their pregnancies, Amnesty International said in a report released today.
Every year in Burkina Faso more than 2,000 women die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth, according to government figures. Amnesty International’s report Giving Life, Risking Death finds that many of these deaths could have been easily prevented if women were given access on time to adequate health care.
“Every woman has the right to life and the right to adequate healthcare, and the government should redouble its efforts to address preventable maternal death,” said Claudio Cordone, interim Secretary General of Amnesty International. “Women in Burkina Faso are trapped in a vicious cycle of discrimination which makes giving birth potentially lethal.”
Most women in Burkina Faso are subordinate to the men in their lives with little or no control over key decisions such as when to seek medical care and the timing and spacing of their pregnancies in spite of having equal status under Burkinabe law. Women and girls continue to be subjected to early marriages and female genital mutilation.
The Burkina Faso government, with the help of the donor community, has developed ambitious strategies that have lowered maternal death rates in some parts of the country. However these are undermined by failures in implementation and a lack of accountability that allows medical personnel to get away with abuses, such as illegal demands for payments.
Poverty is a key contributing factor in preventable maternal death, particularly for impoverished women living in rural areas who face both financial and geographical obstacles to accessing healthcare. In 2006, the Burkinabe government introduced a policy to subsidize 80 per cent of the cost of childbirth and making it completely free for the most impoverished women. However this policy is not well publicised leaving it open to exploitation by corrupt medical staff. Criteria have not been elaborated to establish who qualifies for subsidized care so costs continue to act as a barrier in accessing medical care.
The Amnesty International report says that unequal access to adequate health facilities especially in rural areas; shortages of medical supplies and trained personnel and negative or discriminatory attitudes of health workers are also preventing women from seeking care.
“Maternal death is a tragedy that robs thousands of families of wives, mothers, sisters and daughters each year,” said Claudio Cordone. “So long as women are not allowed control over their own bodies, they will continue to die in their thousands.”
The authorities have responded to the report which was sent to them in advance by welcoming “the meticulous and important” work done by Amnesty International, while stressing that the cases of misbehaviour by medical personnel were “isolated” and reiterating the authorities’ commitment to address the problem of maternal mortality in the country.
Amnesty International is calling on the government to expand and improve access to family planning services, to remove financial barriers to maternal healthcare services, to ensure an even distribution of health facilities and trained staff across the country and to set up a well-publicized and accessible accountability mechanism to help combat corruption and mismanagement.
Download the full report Giving LIfe, Risking Death - Maternal Mortality in Burkina Faso (pdf 2.34MB).
Comments
Michael Wild | Posted on 1 February 2010, 01:07AM | Report comment
Who was responsible for the head line “Women in Burkina Faso dying because of discrimination?” No doubt female disadvantage blights the lives of women in BF. But on my reading there are 12 (tragic) case studies of avoidable deaths in childbirth 10/12 were clearly through lack of resources and neither of the other 2 clearly directly due to male/female power imbalance. One of Amnesty’s great strengths has been its reputation for being accurate and authoritative. I’m really worried we risk throwing it away as we blunder into matters we don’t understand (3rd World Poverty and how to get rid of it). I might add though Amnesty speaks about its “independence” including of “ideologies” (check this web site) feminism had a fair bit to do with this error. In my experience fervent feminists are well represented in AI and it’s not considered good form to question their dogmatic utterances.
Michael Wild | Posted on 30 January 2010, 10:36PM | Report comment
According to Wikipedia Burkina Faso “has one of the lowest GDP’s per capita in the World” with 80% of the population subsistence farmers”. So Good Old Amnesty says it should “Remove financial barriers to accessing maternal health care,” “Expand family planning services… Improve accessability of health care” and while it’s at it “improve monitoring and evaluation to ensure accounatability” (which will still cost money). Do the writers of this report have no shame? They clearly have no sense or judgment For the first time in my 25 odd years as an activist I’m actually more sympathetic to the government than I am to Amnesty. AI would have done more good keeping the “experts” at home and giving the saved money to a real aid organization. Michael Wild (Convenor Bunbury Group).