Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Why do we as Americans just accept the illogical and crappy and unhealthful as "normal" health "care"?



Wow, seems like these rural Peruvians are smarter healthcare consumers than we are--they stand up for their rights and won't use a facility until it conforms to what they want/need.

I love how they object to being forced to wear an ugly hospital johnny, giving birth lying down, etc. So who has the best healthcare in the world?

Pregnancy: Clinic in Rural Peru Draws More Women by Following Local Childbirth Traditions

Published: September 7, 2009

Rural parts of Ayacucho, Peru, have had some of the country’s highest death rates in pregnancy and childbirth. As in many poor countries, most of the deaths occur because women give birth at home, and those trying to help do not know how to deliver a baby safely and prevent or treat hemorrhage, infection and other deadly complications. In 1999 in the Santillana district, part of the Ayacucho region, only 6 percent of births took place at a clinic.

Health workers set out to change that. They started by asking people in the community about traditional ways of giving birth, and about what the clinic was doing wrong. They got an earful. Workers at the clinic did not speak the local language, Quechua. They treated patients brusquely, and barred husbands and other relatives from the delivery room. They forced women to wear hospital gowns instead of their own clothes, and made them give birth lying on a table instead of squatting. They threw away the placenta instead of giving it to the family to bury in a warm place.

Working with local people, members of a nongovernmental group, Health Unlimited, changed delivery services at a clinic in the Santillana district. They made sure Quechua was spoken, let relatives stay and help, set up delivery rooms so that women could squat and made other changes based on local traditions.

Read more here.

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