Part II: Roadblocks to health care for women during COVID-19 in East Africa
Throughout East Africa, midwives and other skilled health care providers safely assist pregnant women during childbirth to reduce the risk of maternal and child mortality.
Yet, COVID-19 measures such as travel bans and nightly curfews have created potentially dangerous physical barriers between pregnant women and skilled health care providers during childbirth.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presents a valid and ongoing threat to unencumbered access to comprehensive maternal health care.
During the pandemic, many pregnant women have been unable to access health care facilities on time — or at all — during childbirth. Under nightly curfews, transport providers have either been unable or unwilling to ferry pregnant women in labor to health facilities for fear of harassment by security agencies.
By mid-April 2020 in Kenya, about one month after COVID-19 measures were put in place, at least five women and three babies died during and immediately following childbirth.
Three pregnant women died in Makueni County due to challenges in access to public health facilities during curfew hours. One of the three women was turned away in the middle of the night by two local midwives, and a boda-boda (“motorcycle”) rider who refused to transport her and her husband to the hospital for fear of an altercation with police for breaking curfew.
The mother of six in Makueni died the following day at the hospital while awaiting a blood transfusion. Fear of harassment by police among boda-boda riders partially stems from recent incidents of violence against transport service providers.
In February 2020 in Kenya, a boda-boda rider was shot dead by a police officer after rushing a child to the hospital who had almost drowned. In March 2020, a boda-boda rider was beaten to death by police officers while returning home after rushing a pregnant woman to the hospital.
Kenya Television Network reported infant mortality rates rose due to fears of “beating the curfew hours”:
source: https://globalvoices.org/2020/06/15/part-ii-roadblocks-to-health-care-for-women-during-covid-19-in-east-africa/
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