Knesset Committee: Postnatal Moms Should Get More Attention

Knesset Status of Women Committee chairwoman MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash – Joint List) said on Tuesday, August 2, that the health system does not provide adequate attention to the health of women following their giving birth. Touma-Sliman attributed one reason for this to the fact that men predominantly set the direction for medical research and that they are inherently less aware of or interested in women’s health problems.

2016-08-07

“We don’t want medicine to be oblivious to gender,” she said. “We want special attention to women, with medical care taking into account the physiological and social differences between the sexes.” In Arab society, the MK said, women get special attention up to 40 days after giving birth. “When I wanted to go back to work in less time, my mother told me that I mustn’t do so. I very much hope that what was clear to my mother is also clear to the Health Ministry.”

Prof. Mordechai Dolitzky, head of obstetrics at Sheba Medical Center, said that doctors and researchers – and even mothers themselves – pay less attention to a mother’s health after her baby is born. Blood clots occur in the mothers 10 times more frequently compared to before and during pregnancy. There are also infections, hemorrhages, edemas and anemia. The period after giving birth is also “high risk.” The committee chairwoman noted that the period that women remain in hospital following delivery – today, barely two days – has declined significantly over the years. Dr. Firas Haik, a Health Ministry coordinator of special events, said that when a woman dies during or just after pregnancy, the tragedy must be officially reported within 24 hours. “We set up a special team to investigate and deal with it. Happily, we don’t hear of many cases – six in all of 2015 and only two so far this year,” he said. “We want to amend our directives so that even a serious incident that does not involve a death should also be reportable.” He added that while the situation in the main cities is very good, Arab-Bedouin women in the South, for example, do not have adequate access to medical care for these problems.

Prof. Drorit Hochner, head of obstetrics at Hadassah University Medical Center on Mount Scopus, said that the period after childbirth “is not neglected. Treatment in the hospital is excellent, and discharge papers give much detailed information. I think it’s more important to increase the number of hours for physiotherapy to strengthen the mother’s pelvic floor and for identifying postnatal depression.”