By Our Reporter
Maternity service providers and health facilities have been urged to exempt differently abled/ mothers with disabilities from antenatal and maternity fees.
Dorcus Kyarisiima, the PWD representative at Masindi General Hospital Management Committee recommends that subjecting differently abled mothers to maternity fees backtracks the efforts of intensifying Respectful Maternity Care.
She justified that these mothers go through a lot of unbearable circumstances which include limited exposure to employment opportunities and abandonment by husbands noting that charging them is equivalent to “milking a Bull.”
“We’re underprivileged, we raise the pregnancies by ourselves and to the period of giving birth the midwives ask for this and the other yet we have no money, we kindly ask that stakeholders come in and push for exemption of such fees,” she said.
The outcries were further amplified by William Mwambu, the Masindi District PWDs councilor who urged that most cases differently abled women are single mothers whose exemption would improve the quality of life with their newborns.
“Some of our expectant mothers when they conceive, the husbands run away from them, they hardly accept that they are the wives and this one becomes a challenge to these mothers.”
The outcries come in the wake when Masindi looks forward to constructing a new section of Masindi General Hospital to ease better access to maternity services as well as other related health services.
In the regard Kyarisiima further urged that authorities ought to consider PWD needs inclusion in the new construction plan.
“The challenge that cuts across all health facilities is that we have no beds for differently abled preferably the lame, even in theatres themselves no single bed is there for example even where mothers lie after giving birth is a challenge.”
The favorable toilets also totally lack, for even when we go to the OPD to access medication there are no wheelchairs, at least as they look forward to constructing a new section of the facility, they should follow those procedures,” she said.
Mwambu however, said that key on the needed prioritization is communication between expectant mothers and health providers.
“These I think in most cases even result into unnecessary caesarian birth because it’s hard for midwives to communicate with mothers who cannot speak who are normally called deaf as well as those with visual impairments.”
