From sternness to a warm welcomeMoving from the rigid health care system of Soviet times to a more open and patient-centred one takes courage and an open mind. In Uzbekistan, a regional maternity hospital in Andijan is acting as a spearhead.
Maternity Hospital Number Three in Andijan was built 18 years ago, when Uzbekistan was still part of the USSR. For many years, delivery procedures followed strict dictates from Moscow. Women giving birth were treated as patients; relatives were banned from the delivery room and visitors were not allowed after babies had been born. Mothers were separated from their infants, except during limited feeding times, and mothers and infants had alarmingly high mortality rates.
Four years ago, a transformation process began. Saodat Akhmadzonova, the hospital's chief physician, explains: "At first, we started studying the WHO Making Pregnancy Safer initiative on our own. Then a handful of us took part in some WHO seminars on the subject, and after that we decided to try to implement the changes ourselves."
Since then, the atmosphere in the hospital has changed radically. Delivery wards are clean, inviting and simply but adequately equipped. Women freely choose the positions in which they want to give birth, and the staff encourage them to have a supporting relative present during the delivery. Rooming-in - the opportunity for mothers to keep their babies in the same room - is practised, and the use of inappropriate medication has been drastically reduced.
Saodat Akhmadzonova explains: "There is a huge difference between what we are doing now and what we did before. We used to treat deliveries as pathological cases, and now we understand that this is a natural physiological process. In the beginning we had people coming in every day questioning what we were doing, but now we have such a good reputation that women come here from all over the region to give birth."
