The Ministry of Health plans to introduce new standards of perinatal care. The changes are to help women who have lost their children. Currently, Polish law, despite the tragic situation for them, instead of helping them, creates problems. Material of the magazine “Poland and the world”. The whole edition is available on TVN24 GO.
Joanna Nowak took a long way to parenthood. Today, the mother of two children and the president of the Gonito Foundation support parents after losing children. Her first child was very sick and the doctors were removed, the next two miscarriages made her slow to lose hope.
– First, there was a sense of regret, sadness, rage, disappointment of a sense of lack of agency and huge injustice, because I surrounded with people who tried to get a child and they came out – recalls Joanna Nowak.
At that time, all doctors were focused on the medical aspect of this loss, and the parents did not quite know what right they were entitled to.
– I did not define the gender, I did not bury these children, I do not have their names, I have no graves for these children – admits the president of the Gonito Foundation. – This is definitely the piece of history that I face to this day – he adds.
The law is such that a woman who miscarriages or gives birth to a dead child is due to short maternity leave: it is eight weeks. He also has the right to bury the child, to the funeral allowance and occasional leave because of the funeral – but to make it so, you need to complete some formalities.
The Ministry of Health plans to introduce new standards of perinatal careShutterstock
– One of the absurdities of Polish law is that a woman who experiences miscarriage in order to be able to exercise her rights, must prove, in a special form of the child's sex – says the minister of the family, work and social policy Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-BÄ…k.
If this is a later stage of pregnancy, the problem is smaller, but if early, a paid DNA test is necessary to determine the sex of the child. – In this situation, these people, if they are unable to pay for a genetic examination, are deprived of both maternity leave and funeral allowance – notes Joanna Pietrusiewicz from the Humanly born Foundation.
Work on new standards of perinatal care
The Ministry of Family of Labor and Social Policy has just established a team that is to deal with legal changes in this matter that would remove these barriers. At the same time, work is ongoing at the Ministry of Health – public consultations are ending on new perinatal care standards, which also relate to the care of women who have misconduct or gave birth to a dead child.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health Jakub GoÅ‚Ä…b emphasizes that “there is an absolute ban on placing these women in hospital rooms, together with pregnant women or women in the puerperium, in whom pregnancy ended with a birthday child.” – The point is not to deepen the traumas of those women who have just survived the tragedy – he explains.
Currently applicable standards are less stringent in this regard and recommend that if possible do not place women after losing in one room with women after a happy solution.
Gynecolor and the author of the blog Doctor Ashtanga, Dr. Anna Orawiec, admits that this is “a big challenge for the system to create such a strictly one -man hall with a bathroom”.
The Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy to cooperate in creating a new law also invited parents who have experienced losses. The team's first official meeting will take place in the last week of February.
– I hope that in a few, several weeks we will see the first effects, in the form of draft ordinances so that to answer these most urgent, already diagnosed needs- says Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-BÄ…k.
The Ministry of Health plans to introduce new standards of perinatal care this spring.
Source of the main photo: Shutterstock