Hesperian Health Guides
Reproductive Health
HealthWiki > Where Women Have No Doctor > Chapter 29: Refugees and Displaced Women > Reproductive Health
Refugees and displaced people are often denied proper health care. Health workers may have difficulty reaching displaced persons in dangerous or faraway areas. Or, if services are available, health workers may not know people’s languages or their cultural beliefs and practices that affect health care.
In addition, specific health needs of women and people who can get pregnant are often overlooked. These include:
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- care during pregnancy and birth. Pregnant people need regular care before giving birth (prenatal care) and have better results with birth attendants who understand their traditions around giving birth.
- family planning. In many refugee communities, the birth rate is high. Refugees and displaced people often do not have access to family planning information or supplies. Crowded refugee camps may offer little privacy to use these methods and no secure, personal spaces to keep them.
- supplies for menstrual periods.
- information about and treatment for STIs including HIV.
- regular check-ups to detect serious health problems, like cancer, diabetes, and tuberculosis.
- safe abortion. This is often unavailable, especially if the governments or agencies providing health care are against it.
- enough calcium, iron, folic acid, iodine, and vitamin C in the diet, especially during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
- more women health workers to provide care. Some women cannot be examined by men because cultural beliefs forbid it.
Ways to improve the health of women and people who can get pregnant
Becoming a link between health services and your refugee community is a great way to improve health care for everyone. You can help the staff understand your community’s traditions and needs, and request changes. For example:
- Ask the clinic to be open longer at least one day a week, and for women health workers to be available on that day.
- Ask a midwife or birth attendant from your community to explain your customs around birth to the health workers.
- If health workers do not understand your language, find someone who can translate for them.
- Ask for classes on family planning, HIV, STIs, prenatal care, birth, and nutrition. Remind health center staff that people will need a private area for discussion.
- Request extra food and vitamin pills for people who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
- Request that health workers from your community receive training in treating the health needs of women and people who can get pregnant.
Becoming a health worker
Many clinics in cities and refugee camps train refugees to be health workers, birth attendants, and health educators, since they speak the refugees’ languages and could improve the health of the community.
In Camp Kakuma in northern Kenya, for example, southern Sudanese refugee women are very involved in health care. They are being trained so they can work in both southern Sudan and Kenya when they leave the camp. Sara Elija, a refugee from the Sudan, says her new role as a trainer of traditional birth attendants has given her hope for work when she is no longer a refugee.