Prenatal care and human rights: Addressing the gap between medical and legal frameworks and the experience of women in Brazil
Prenatal care and human rights: Addressing the gap between medical and legal frameworks and the experience of women in Brazil
Access to quality and affordable healthcare is central to the fulfilment of women’s reproductive and sexual health needs and rights. For this reason, the World Health Organization declared access to appropriate healthcare services during pregnancy and childbirth a fundamental women’s right. Prenatal care is a recognized human right to women’s health in Brazil, as declared by the 1988 Constitution and many Brazilian policies. However, implementing the rights to health in Brazil presents a fundamental performance gap between legal rights and their delivery concerning reproductive health. Through extensive fieldwork including focus groups, interviews with women and participate observation in two municipalities in northeastern Brazil, this article addresses these issues and explores women’s lived experience of access to and their fulfilment of the right to health regarding prenatal healthcare. We offer and account of the experience of women regarding what they identified as barriers that trample their right to health, that is: a) limited personnel and medical equipment as a perception of neglect; b) timely delivery of services: time matters for perception and experience of rights; c) misinformation as a barrier to the exercise of health rights; and d) socioeconomic barriers. These barriers particularly affect the right of women in rural communities, with lower socioeconomic levels and education, as well as brown and black women, from an intersectionality perspective, who are already at greater health risk and inadequate prenatal care. As such, we argue there is a performance gap between what the normative and legal frameworks encourage the health system to do and what the system actually provides in terms of access, equality, respect and continuity of treatment amongst certain groups in society whose right to health are denied while their health risks increase.
Brazil, Female, Health Services Accessibility, Human Rights, Humans, Pregnancy, Prenatal Care, Women's Rights
e0281581
Rodrigues, Camila Brito
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Thomaz, Erika Barbara Abreu Fonseca
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Batista, Rosângela Fernandes Lucena
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Riggirozzi, Pía
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de Oliveira Moreira, Dina Stefany
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Gonçalves, Laura Lamas Martins
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Lamy, Zeni Carvalho
6b0426fa-5e8c-41b4-b232-e081d28cb57a
14 February 2023
Rodrigues, Camila Brito
f1d062a4-167a-49c0-a23c-699d172b1933
Thomaz, Erika Barbara Abreu Fonseca
42afd243-b114-47f8-82b4-7449abc42821
Batista, Rosângela Fernandes Lucena
d28df13d-0d8c-4760-955c-77d80c7afc8a
Riggirozzi, Pía
ed3be4f8-37e7-46a2-8242-f6495d727c22
de Oliveira Moreira, Dina Stefany
7700b6d2-29a9-4e43-a5e3-af520fefba63
Gonçalves, Laura Lamas Martins
d6dd2e41-e0a0-456a-baa9-2cfeabd85af0
Lamy, Zeni Carvalho
6b0426fa-5e8c-41b4-b232-e081d28cb57a
Rodrigues, Camila Brito, Thomaz, Erika Barbara Abreu Fonseca, Batista, Rosângela Fernandes Lucena and Riggirozzi, Pía
,
et al.
(2023)
Prenatal care and human rights: Addressing the gap between medical and legal frameworks and the experience of women in Brazil.
PLoS ONE, 18 (2), , [e0281581].
(doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0281581).
Abstract
Access to quality and affordable healthcare is central to the fulfilment of women’s reproductive and sexual health needs and rights. For this reason, the World Health Organization declared access to appropriate healthcare services during pregnancy and childbirth a fundamental women’s right. Prenatal care is a recognized human right to women’s health in Brazil, as declared by the 1988 Constitution and many Brazilian policies. However, implementing the rights to health in Brazil presents a fundamental performance gap between legal rights and their delivery concerning reproductive health. Through extensive fieldwork including focus groups, interviews with women and participate observation in two municipalities in northeastern Brazil, this article addresses these issues and explores women’s lived experience of access to and their fulfilment of the right to health regarding prenatal healthcare. We offer and account of the experience of women regarding what they identified as barriers that trample their right to health, that is: a) limited personnel and medical equipment as a perception of neglect; b) timely delivery of services: time matters for perception and experience of rights; c) misinformation as a barrier to the exercise of health rights; and d) socioeconomic barriers. These barriers particularly affect the right of women in rural communities, with lower socioeconomic levels and education, as well as brown and black women, from an intersectionality perspective, who are already at greater health risk and inadequate prenatal care. As such, we argue there is a performance gap between what the normative and legal frameworks encourage the health system to do and what the system actually provides in terms of access, equality, respect and continuity of treatment amongst certain groups in society whose right to health are denied while their health risks increase.
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journal.pone.0281581
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Accepted/In Press date: 26 January 2023
Published date: 14 February 2023
Additional Information:
Funding: This study was funded by Medical Research Council (MRC, Grant number MR/R022933/1, United Kingdon), Foundation for Research Support and Scientific and Technological Development of Maranhão (FAPEMA, Research process COOPI-00710/18), National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, Research processes 306592/2018-5 and 314939/2020-2), and Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, finance code 001). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Copyright: © 2023 Rodrigues et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords:
Brazil, Female, Health Services Accessibility, Human Rights, Humans, Pregnancy, Prenatal Care, Women's Rights
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Local EPrints ID: 476412
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/476412
ISSN: 1932-6203
PURE UUID: d22846f0-9e05-4718-a9f3-6e63ebb6639b
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Date deposited: 20 Apr 2023 17:12
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:15
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Contributors
Author:
Camila Brito Rodrigues
Author:
Erika Barbara Abreu Fonseca Thomaz
Author:
Rosângela Fernandes Lucena Batista
Author:
Dina Stefany de Oliveira Moreira
Author:
Laura Lamas Martins Gonçalves
Author:
Zeni Carvalho Lamy
Corporate Author: et al.
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