Is Juliet’s fear of going to a health provider justified?
Are health providers sensitive to an unusual patient like Juliet ?
Let us explore the Issues further
Juliet is 13 years old and married to Narayana who is 15 years old. She lives in a congested small house in Bharathmata slum. She was detected as pregnant in the month of January by Dr.Roopa/ Dr.Thriveni . As a follow-up task Anthu and the Community Health Assistants (CHA) have been repeatedly motivating her to undergo antenatal check up (ANC) but she has never yielded to suggestions given by our team. Whenever our team visited the slum they consistently motivated her but unfortunately it was similar to watering a barren land. Somehow she would always escape from our sight. To avoid our suggestions or accompanying her to the hospital there would be an answer that she was not at home, she had gone to her mother’s place etc.
We would discuss her in our review meeting and feel helpless of being unable to motivate her. We were in dilemma whether to give up or pursue her to visit the urban health center. At that point Anthu said –“No I will take her to the hospital”.
Anthu was spurred into action, along with Josephine she took Juliet to the public health maternity home. Taking Juliet to the hospital was not an easy task. Anthu and Josephine reached Bharathmata slum at 9.45 am and waited till 11.30 am to meet Juliet and lure her into accepting to visit the hospital. Even on that day Juliet played the same tricks, unwilling to attend the hospital. After an hour of restless waiting Josephine went to her home to fetch her. She found her at home completely disconcerned about her health and need to go to the hospital. After long hour of convincing, Josephine and Anthu took her to the hospital.
When they arrived at the hospital it was 12.30 pm, past registration time and the hospital staff refused to take her in. After explaining their effort in motivating her to have ANC, the nurse agreed to allow her in. She was taken to the registration counter and later to the nurse for general check-up. Here the nurse collected general information about her family, marriage and occupation of her husband. When the nurse realized Juliet was 14 years old she made fun of her saying “What is your age, do you want a pregnancy at this age?” the rest of the staff started laughing at this remark. In addition, while gathering this information, the tone of the nurse was authoritative and insulting, this behaviour of all the staff made Juliet feel as though she had done something wrong. When Josephine felt the situation was getting out of hand, she intervened to tell them “Please do not insult and laugh at her, with great difficulty we have brought her for ante natal check up”.
Meanwhile she had completed blood and urine test including BP and weight check-up. All the results showed her to be a high risk patient (wt is 34kg, BP100/60, HB is 8.0gm). Later she was taken to the doctor for further checkup. The young interns visiting the maternity Centre realized this was a risk pregnancy and refused to do further check-up. Juliet waited for the senior doctor, who referred her to Bowring or Ambedkar for further tests like scanning and PPTCT.
Either a teenage pregnancy, or adult pregnancy, the responsibility of the public providers requires sensitive attitude at least towards unusual patient like Juliet. An insulting attitude of the public health staff induces fear among teen agers to get ANC. My perspective is strongly supported by Juliet’s view about the hospital and its staff. She told us that she was scared of going to the hospital since she had heard that they would be rude towards teenage pregnancy. With this attitude how can one expect the community to have trust in public health providers?
On one hand there is the community with no trust in public health services, and on the other handwe have public health providers with de-sensitized behaviour towards the community. This is a huge challenging for us.
Not how, but we are constantly exploring the ways and means of building the trust between the community and the public health providers!!!!!!!!!!
Amrutha
Faculty
Institute of Public Health
