Barriers to Respectful Maternity Care in the Year 2020 in Ruwa, Goromonzi District, Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Respectful maternity care (RMC), is the care given to all women in a way that maintain their dignity, give them privacy and confidentiality, so that they are free from harm and not be mistreated, as this enables them to have informed choices, and they continuously support when they are in labour and delivering their child. Respectful maternity care is a very important strategy for improving quality and utilization of maternity care. However, to access good care during labour and childbirth in health care facilities might not guarantee good quality of care because of non-respectful and undignified care, which will be a barrier to access care during intra-partum period. The aim of this study was to assess the factors associated with RMC during childbirth in Ruwa, Goromonzi District, Zimbabwe in the year 2020. The seven categories or ways of disrespect and abuse and the rights of women when they are giving birth were used as a guide in this study. The study was an analytical cross-sectional design. This study was done at Ruwa Poly clinic, Goromonzi District in Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe. The study population were all women from 15 years of age and above who were attending to Ruwa clinic and who had a normal vaginal delivery in 2020. The population included the nurses and midwives working at Ruwa Clinic, in the department of maternity. Data was collected using interviewer administered questionnaires. Epi Infor 7.2.4 was used to enter data and data was analysed using Stata 13. Ways of disrespect and abuse (D&A) at Ruwa Clinic included: abandonment (65%), non-consented care (29.3%), undignified care (27.2%), being physical abused (13.3%), being discriminated (13.3), detention for non-payment of funds (6.6%), and non-confidential care (3.3%). Of the participants 32 (53.3%) were not knowledgeable on the rights of women when in labour. An increase of one year in age of women decreased the odds of non-dignified care of staff being impolite and was statistically significant with p-value = 0.031. An additional one more pregnancy and one more hour of the duration of labour increased the odds of staff not explaining the labour process to the women and was statistically significant with p-value = 0.019. Disrespectful maternity may be barriers to access quality RMC in Ruwa, Goromonzi District. Therefore, strengthening interventions is important to adopt and implement good policies, which promotes respectful and nonabusive maternity care in Ruwa.