Providing women’s health care during COVID‐19: Personal and professional challenges faced by health workers

Abstract

Health providers for women have experienced challenges during the COVID‐19 pandemic but there are ways to address these challenges.

Utilization cost of maternity services for childbirth among pregnant women with coronavirus disease 2019 in Nigeria’s epicenter

“…This increases the risk of catastrophic health expenditure. Providers, more so those in low‐ to middle‐income countries, need to explore innovative ways to source PPE without passing the burden on to pregnant women 20 . There is a case for governments to mobilize local PPE production and negotiate with sellers, while offering incentives for reduced costs and regulating sell‐on costs.…”

A Cost Analysis of Childbirth for Pregnant Women with COVID-19 in Nigeria’s Epicentre

“…This increases the risk of catastrophic health expenditure. Providers, more so those in LMICs, who are facing greater shortages and had huge budget constraints even pre-COVID, need to explore more innovative ways to source PPEs without passing the burden unto pregnant women (Green et al ., 2020). Indeed, at the beginning of the pandemic, the cost of PPEs was cheaper, but this has now skyrocketed with the price of surgical masks having increased sixfold, N95 respirators by threefold, and surgical gowns have doubled (Burki, 2020).…”

“…While current guidance proposes telemedicine as a platform to provide ante-natal care (ANC) for pregnant women with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 (Okunade et al ., 2020), scaling this up to include all pregnant women requiring ANC while counselling them to minimize risk of infection around them might help forestall additional cost required to manage COVID-19 in pregnancy. However, this should not be applied as a one-size-fits-all solution, especially for high-risk pregnancies, who need to be seen physically, and those who do not have ‘smart’ phones’ enabled with telemedicine capacity (Green et al ., 2020).…”

The COVID‐19 pandemic: A first‐year review through the lens of IJGO

“…However, this meant that women were deprived of an option which has been demonstrated to not only improve the experience and outcomes of childbirth, but also to help prevent other forms of mistreatment during childbirth 13 . Green et al note the significant personal and professional challenges faced by healthcare workers during COVID‐19 in an editorial which offers recommendations for how best to overcome these 14 …”