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Abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: Prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in Ghana
BACKGROUND: Abuse and mistreatment of women during childbirth is a major barrier to facility-based delivery, putting women at risk of avoidable complications, trauma and negative health outcomes including death. We study the prevalence of obstetric violence (OV) and its associated factors in the Ash...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9968731/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36860379 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.988961 |
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author | Yalley, Abena Asefuaba Abioye, Dare Appiah, Seth Christopher Yaw Hoeffler, Anke |
author_facet | Yalley, Abena Asefuaba Abioye, Dare Appiah, Seth Christopher Yaw Hoeffler, Anke |
author_sort | Yalley, Abena Asefuaba |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Abuse and mistreatment of women during childbirth is a major barrier to facility-based delivery, putting women at risk of avoidable complications, trauma and negative health outcomes including death. We study the prevalence of obstetric violence (OV) and its associated factors in the Ashanti and Western Regions of Ghana. METHODOLOGY: A facility-based cross-sectional survey was conducted in eight public health facilities from September to December 2021. Specifically, close-ended questionnaires were administered to 1,854 women, aged 15–45 who gave birth in the health facilities. The data collected include the sociodemographic attributes of women, their obstetric history and experiences of OV based on the seven typologies according to the categorization by Bowser and Hills. FINDINGS: We find that about two in every three women (65.3%) experience OV. The most common form of OV is non-confidential care (35.8%), followed by abandoned care (33.4%), non-dignified care (28.5%) and physical abuse (27.4%). Furthermore, 7.7% of women were detained in health facilities for their inability to pay their bills, 7.5% received non-consented care while 11.0% reported discriminated care. A test for associated factors of OV yielded few results. Single women (OR 1.6, 95% CI 1.2–2.2) and women who reported birth complications (OR 3.2, 95% CI 2.4–4.3) were more likely to experience OV compared with married women and women who had no birth complications. In addition, teenage mothers (OR 2.6, 95% CI 1.5–4.5) were more likely to experience physical abuse compared to older mothers. Rural vs. urban location, employment status, gender of birth attendant, type of delivery, time of delivery, the ethnicity of the mothers and their social class were all not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of OV in the Ashanti and Western Regions was high and only few variables were strongly associated with OV, suggesting that all women are at risk of abuse. Interventions should aim at promoting alternative birth strategies devoid of violence and changing the organizational culture of violence embedded in the obstetric care in Ghana. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9968731 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99687312023-02-28 Abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: Prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in Ghana Yalley, Abena Asefuaba Abioye, Dare Appiah, Seth Christopher Yaw Hoeffler, Anke Front Public Health Public Health BACKGROUND: Abuse and mistreatment of women during childbirth is a major barrier to facility-based delivery, putting women at risk of avoidable complications, trauma and negative health outcomes including death. We study the prevalence of obstetric violence (OV) and its associated factors in the Ashanti and Western Regions of Ghana. METHODOLOGY: A facility-based cross-sectional survey was conducted in eight public health facilities from September to December 2021. Specifically, close-ended questionnaires were administered to 1,854 women, aged 15–45 who gave birth in the health facilities. The data collected include the sociodemographic attributes of women, their obstetric history and experiences of OV based on the seven typologies according to the categorization by Bowser and Hills. FINDINGS: We find that about two in every three women (65.3%) experience OV. The most common form of OV is non-confidential care (35.8%), followed by abandoned care (33.4%), non-dignified care (28.5%) and physical abuse (27.4%). Furthermore, 7.7% of women were detained in health facilities for their inability to pay their bills, 7.5% received non-consented care while 11.0% reported discriminated care. A test for associated factors of OV yielded few results. Single women (OR 1.6, 95% CI 1.2–2.2) and women who reported birth complications (OR 3.2, 95% CI 2.4–4.3) were more likely to experience OV compared with married women and women who had no birth complications. In addition, teenage mothers (OR 2.6, 95% CI 1.5–4.5) were more likely to experience physical abuse compared to older mothers. Rural vs. urban location, employment status, gender of birth attendant, type of delivery, time of delivery, the ethnicity of the mothers and their social class were all not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of OV in the Ashanti and Western Regions was high and only few variables were strongly associated with OV, suggesting that all women are at risk of abuse. Interventions should aim at promoting alternative birth strategies devoid of violence and changing the organizational culture of violence embedded in the obstetric care in Ghana. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-02-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9968731/ /pubmed/36860379 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.988961 Text en Copyright © 2023 Yalley, Abioye, Appiah and Hoeffler. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Public Health Yalley, Abena Asefuaba Abioye, Dare Appiah, Seth Christopher Yaw Hoeffler, Anke Abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: Prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in Ghana |
title | Abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: Prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in Ghana |
title_full | Abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: Prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in Ghana |
title_fullStr | Abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: Prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in Ghana |
title_full_unstemmed | Abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: Prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in Ghana |
title_short | Abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: Prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in Ghana |
title_sort | abuse and humiliation in the delivery room: prevalence and associated factors of obstetric violence in ghana |
topic | Public Health |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9968731/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36860379 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.988961 |
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