Mistreatment of women during child birth - A narrative review

Abstract

Respectful maternity care is the universal right of every woman all around the world but recent evidences show that women receive disrespectful care and face abuse during facility-based childbirth. It creates a negative impression of the institutional delivery and indirectly contributes to increases in the maternal morbidity and mortality rate; hence, this narrative review was conducted to identify the various forms of mistreatment, determinants and prevalence of disrespectful maternity care in India. (i) To explore the status of mistreatment of women during childbirth. (ii) To assess the factors responsible for mistreatment experienced by women. Keywords searches of PubMed, Google scholar, manual searches of other relevant journals and references lists of primary articles. Quantitative studies and mixed-method studies on women's experiences of factors responsible for mistreatment during labor were explored, study result revealed that factors affecting respectful maternity care (RMC) include age, religion, income etc., Various types of mistreatments experienced by women during labur were physical abuse (9.3%), nondignified care (14.25%), nonconfidential care (33.95%), neglect/ignore (9.35%), verbal abuse (19.72%), discrimination (7.36%), threats to with hold treatment (8.15%), lack of information (26.2%), delivered alone (9.25%), choice of position denied (10.5%), requested payment of bribe (46.3%), unnecessary separation from baby (4.3%), nonconsented care (49.05%). Mistreatment during labor is common in India and is commonly found in the form of verbal abuse, physical abuse, discrimination, threats to with hold treatment, lack of information, ignored, delivered alone, choice of position denied, companion not allowed, requested payment or bribe, unnecessary separation from body etc., Health care personal plays a major role for providing RMC and in preventing mistreatment during childbirth. They must be aware about the mistreatment during childbirth and its consequences such as increasing maternal mortality rate and decrease no. of institutional delivery.