Respectful Maternity Care (RMC) is a universal human right that is due to every childbearing woman in every health system around the world. A woman’s relationship with maternity care providers and the maternity care system during pregnancy and childbirth is vitally important. Not only are these encounters the vehicles for essential and potentially lifesaving health services, women’s experiences with caregivers at this time can empower and comfort or inflict lasting damage and emotional trauma. They can add to or destroy her confidence and self-esteem.
For the last 30 years, C3 has been working relentlessly to break the veil of silence around disrespectful and abusive maternity care and empower health care providers, women and communities to recognize RMC as a basic human right.
We are doing this one health care facility at a time. We train the staff in these facilities (including nurses, support staff and sometimes doctors), sensitizing them on issues and how to incorporate respect and dignity in their services in handling all maternity concerns at their centres or hospitals. We have clear standards -- our seven charters have to be followed by the health care facilities, and we regularly monitor them to ensure that they are doing so.
“I do not refer to the women I treat as ‘patients’ – I call them ‘mothers’.”
Sadubai is a nurse in a government hospital. She is trained and sensitized assiduously by C3. In her 8 years of working as a nurse, she has tried to ensure that women who come to the hospital give birth in an environment that respects and cares for them as mothers.
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*Disclaimer: The money that you contribute will be pooled in and allocated towards the initiative where the need is the most.