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Antenatal Care Essay

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Antenatal care consists of the care that a woman receives from a healthcare professional whilst pregnant. If a woman does not receive antenatal care during her pregnancy, complications and disorders can go unnoticed or untreated. The World Health Statistics 2010 revealed that South Africa has 400 maternity mortality in 1000 live births.
The obstacles faced in antenatal care in South Africa, particularly in rural areas, will be discussed, as well as possible solutions to try and solve this calamity, before it gets any worse.
With a large percentage of South Africa living in poverty and rural areas or conditions, one would assume that women living in those areas would not inquire about antenatal care because they cannot afford it. It turns out …show more content…

This also puts the baby in danger, because these women could have been smoking and drinking, not knowing that they were even pregnant. A study was conducted with women that were seeking antenatal care at a clinic in the Hlabisa district and one women said; “sometimes it’s difficult to tell that you are pregnant, some people have irregular periods, they miss periods for month only to find they are not pregnant, so it is better to wait, to see if you are really pregnant.” This can obviously lead to detrimental effects such as still born babies as well as babies with fetal alcohol syndrome. A solution to this catastrophe would be, to have free pregnancy tests in the hospitals and clinics, the same way that condoms are distributed. It would be a simple pregnancy test so that women can receive antenatal care earlier in their pregnancy to reduce high risk pregnancy and births.
It can then be concluded that although there are health facilities in place for women to receive antenatal care, the lack of resources, lack of staff and even unfriendliness of the staff can lead to women not even going to receive antenatal care. We, as a country need to be alerted of the importance of antenatal care, because most women do not even know about it or do not take it seriously at

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