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No chance to live: Newborn deaths at Hopley settlement, Zimbabwe
Amnesty International
December 02, 2010

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR46/018/2010/en

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Introduction

In June 2010, Amnesty International found that pregnant women and girls at Hopley settlement, in Harare, are at risk of ill-health and even death due to inadequate access to essential health services. Both their own lives and the lives of their newborn babies are put at risk because of the government's failure to provide adequate levels of maternal and newborn care.

Though there have been some recent investments1 to rehabilitate the health delivery services in other communities in Harare after many years of neglect, the situation at Hopley has remained precarious. A temporary clinic set up by a humanitarian agency in 2005, and later handed over to the Harare City Council (HCC), is far from adequate. It is situated in an old farm house, with no running water and woefully inadequate sanitation facilities. Clinic staff and patients share a single pit toilet. The supply of medicines to the clinic is erratic. Critically, this clinic does not offer maternal and newborn care services.

Amnesty International has documented accounts of newborn deaths from women and girls who lost babies soon after giving birth which they attribute to the appalling living conditions at Hopley and the government's failure to provide maternal and newborn healthcare at the settlement.

This failure forces women and girls at Hopley to deliver at home without a trained birth attendant. From interviews with community leaders and women at Hopley, Amnesty International identified 21 cases2 of newborn deaths that reportedly occurred during the first five months of 2010.

Amnesty International also spoke to 12 women and girls at Hopley whose newborn babies died, and who delivered babies without a trained birth attendant between May 2009 and May 2010. From these interviews, Amnesty International documented nine newborn deaths which occurred between January and May 2010 and three cases that occurred in 2009. One of the women gave birth at home without a birth attendant in 2009 and the child lived, but in 2006 the same woman gave birth in similar circumstances and the baby died.

In interviews with women and girls and community leaders at Hopley, Amnesty International documented several reports of preterm births (babies born around seven months) where babies died hours after delivery. The mothers felt that the babies died because they could not keep them warm in their plastic shacks

Lack of access to clean water and sanitation is also a concern in the community. At the time of Amnesty International's visit five of the six boreholes sunk by a humanitarian organization were not working. The community relied on wells dug at their small plots, some next to pit toilets risking contamination.3 During home deliveries women reported using dirty water to clean themselves and their newborn babies. Lack of access to safe water and sanitation exposes newborn babies to infections which can be life-threatening.

Amnesty International is calling on the Government of Zimbabwe to urgently address these threats to the health and lives of women and newborn babies at Hopley. The government should immediately investigate the causes of preterm births and newborn deaths at Hopley settlement and identify government interventions required to prevent maternal and newborn ill-health and death. It should also immediately put in place all necessary measures to ensure pregnant women and girls have access to a full range of maternal and newborn healthcare.

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