Last year, I met a homeless woman who was sleeping rough in a busy port near Athens. She was isolated, vulnerable, completely alone – and pregnant. Every day people walked past her, ignored her, tried to pretend she didn’t exist. She had no one to talk to and no idea what was happening to her body; she didn’t even know how long she had been pregnant for. She was terrified.
Last week, I noticed a wealthy-looking pregnant woman out walking with her husband near the same port. She was greeted with warm smiles from passersby. Strangers congratulated her or stopped to ask her about her pregnancy. She had a whole host of people to talk to about her transition into motherhood. Granted, she too was probably terrified, but she could take comfort in having a network of support surrounding her. She looked happy.
What makes these women so different?
All too often, people stigmatise pregnancy for women living in poverty. They make assumptions about them, judging them as selfish or irresponsible. Pregnancy for them is not seen as the beautiful blessing that it is for women who are comfortably off; when it comes to women who have nothing, we see pregnancy almost as a disease, another unnecessary burden. But all of these women, regardless of their socio-economic background, are performing a miracle – they are quite literally creating the future. And a future of healthy, happy children must begin with healthy, happy mothers.
Through my involvement with Médecins du Monde in Greece and Safe Motherhood Week, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to reflect on the nature of our work. As healthcare professionals, we dedicate our lives to ensuring that our patients stay healthy. But we can’t take “healthy” to simply mean free of disease – when talking about health, we mean the state of full physical, mental and social wellbeing. Our care cannot simply end at prescribing medication.
At Médecins du Monde, we not only run clinics, we also work in 24 refugee camps across Greece, where pregnant women make up just over 10% of the population. We don’t aim to provide anything special; just the same basic safety net that so many European women take for granted. Being pregnant and in poverty is far more difficult than we could ever have imagined, as women simply do not understand what is happening to them. Without modern tools like the internet, it is very difficult to stay informed, and many women will not so much as set foot in a hospital until they deliver their baby. So, as well as allowing women to access our clinics for free, we also organise seminars, led by obstetricians, which are attended by healthcare staff, NGOs and local communities. Through these seminars, we hope to educate people and break down some of the stereotypes surrounding pregnancy in poorer communities. It is also important for organisations to work with, not instead of, governments and health ministries, to build good practice and reach as many women as possible.
If we in the west want to believe we are a society that protects women and children, we need to start proving it. We can’t keep turning a blind eye to pregnant women who live in poverty. We need to look at them and ask ourselves – can she cope? What could I do to help her?
It took a long time to build up trust, but eventually the homeless woman came to visit one of our clinics. We were able to make sure she was healthy and perform the necessary scans to give her an accurate idea of when her baby would be born. Perhaps most importantly, she finally had the chance to talk. She could ask all the questions, big and small, that had been plaguing her mind for the last six months; she gained an understanding of all the changes that were going on in her body and we could give her a better idea of what to expect. Of course, like the 40 million women living in poverty across Europe, this woman still needs a lot of help. But for the first time, she is looking forward to being a mother. And why shouldn’t she? It’s an incredible thing to be.
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