Voronezh Health Ministry Dodges Infant Mortality Queries
The tragedy at the Novokuznetsk maternity hospital, where nine infants died during the New Year holidays, exposed long-standing problems in the obstetric care system. Not for a year, not five years, not even 10. Obstetric violence has come to be seen by both doctors and many women as something taken for granted: a side effect of a difficult profession, and indeed—as nature intended in a woman«s lot. And another trouble—the unwillingness of officials to see the problem, discuss it, and solve it. The head of Kuzbass, Igor Serdyuk, for example, defended the doctors, shifting the blame onto the women who lost their children.
The ostrich position is convenient, but unsightly and dead-end. And honestly—I don«t know from what good intentions they proceeded in the Ministry of Health of the Voronezh Region when, in response to a request from Voronezh1.ru for statistics on infant mortality in the region since 2000, its main causes, and what is being done to reduce it… they answered us with this:
“Voronezh Region has been among the regions of the Russian Federation with a low level of infant mortality for the past two years.”
And also this:
“The main principles of ensuring epidemiological safety of patients and medical personnel in obstetric institutions, aimed at preventing the occurrence and spread of infections associated with medical care, include a set of organizational, engineering-technical, disinfection-sterilization, regime-restrictive and other preventive and anti-epidemic measures. They are systemic in nature and developed in accordance with all regulatory documents governing the activities of medical organizations to ensure infectious safety.”
For those who didn«t grasp it—no need to worry, everything is fine with us. However, after the tragedy in Novokuznetsk, Voronezh medical officials decided to conduct a “self-audit of the system for controlling the prevention of infant mortality”: together with colleagues from the Burdenko Voronezh State Medical University, they are organizing webinars for maternity hospital staff on the topic of infections in newborns. And staff were also given a memo “on signs of epidemiological trouble in an obstetric hospital, with emphasis on precursors and signaling factors.”
How much money is spent in the Voronezh Region on the development of maternity hospitals, the health ministry for some reason did not tell us either.
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We have no grounds not to trust the ministers—and the goal of the request was not necessarily to find “bad” things. People should not be afraid—they should be talked to: I«m talking about patients now, journalists are conduits. In Stavropol, for example, local ministers provided a full breakdown on infant mortality. And for the recollections of Voronezh women about their childbirths, read our article “I»ve Been to Hell.” What Mothers Really Say About Voronezh Maternity Hospitals. A psychologist«s opinion on the causes of obstetric violence and how to protect against it—here.
