Swedish Maternity Care Racist – Demands Action

Skin color determines the quality of maternity and childbirth care. This is claimed by a group of debaters in a joint opinion article where they also demand that healthcare personnel be educated about the prejudices that can hinder equal treatment.

Research is said to show how racism affects the interaction between healthcare personnel and patients in Swedish healthcare, and in a new research project, it is claimed that discrimination in maternity and childbirth care is often invisible and that knowledge about racism is limited. This is written by, among others, Aurora Brännström, chairman of RFSU Stockholm.

Brännström refers to the project Equal Childbirth, organized by RFSU Stockholm, which deals with African women’s experiences of maternity and childbirth care in the Stockholm Region. They lament ‘recurring experiences of racism, ignorance, and lack of responsiveness in maternity and childbirth care, leading to worry, stress, and in some cases, serious physical complications.’

They also claim that the National Board of Health and Welfare’s national statistics on pregnancies and childbirths show significant differences between different groups and that women from sub-Saharan Africa are at higher risk of complications. Their children are also at a greater risk of having a lower birth weight.

According to the debaters, they are convinced that everyone working in maternity and childbirth care wants to provide good and safe care, ‘but racism in healthcare is not always visible’ and can be found in ‘structures and routines that affect treatment and health outcomes, often without anyone reflecting on it.’

Four Measures

To stop the alleged racism in healthcare, they want the Stockholm Region to develop an action plan against racism in maternity and childbirth care, implement systematic follow-up of unequal outcomes and make it a governing quality goal, ensure that training provides staff with concrete tools to counteract racist actions and assessments, and provide midwifery and childbirth services with support to develop routines that reduce the risk of misjudgments and unconscious bias.

In addition to Aurora Brännström, the opinion article has also been signed by Anna Björsson, chairman of the Swedish Association of Midwives’ local branch in Stockholm, Hannah Laustiola, secretary general of Doctors of the World, and Jolin Mårtensson, chairman of Birth Rights Sweden.