Turned Away, Some Indigenous Mexican Women Giving Birth Outside Hospitals Timothy Johnson - McClatchy
go to original February 11, 2014

Jesus Ofelia Lopez stands near the steps of a hospital in Huajuapan de Leon in Mexico's Oaxaca state, Jan. 29, 2014, where her pregnant daughter delivered a baby, unable to get entry to the facility. (Tim Johnson/MCT)

HUAJUAPAN DE LEON —  Seven times since mid-2013, women have given birth on the lawns or steps of hospitals or health clinics in the states of Oaxaca and Puebla. The cases are known largely because bystanders snapped photos or took videos, and later posted images on the Internet.

The cases almost always involve darker-skinned women - mostly indigenous, as Mexico’s native groups are known - and they’ve laid bare the discrimination that some patients say underlies Mexico’s health care system. A cardboard sign taped to the wall outside the General Hospital here says, “Enough of racism!” But the cases also expose shortcomings in policies that have swamped hospitals with routine pregnancies that could be cared for in health clinics or even at home with the help of midwives.

Spooked by the national publicity given to the cases in Oaxaca, the third poorest of Mexico’s 31 states, state Health Secretary German Tenorio Vasconcelos has said that he’s fired four physicians and suspended two in cases where pregnant women have been denied entry to clinics or hospitals.

Read the rest at The State

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