The Compassionate Birth Project

The Compassionate Birth Project (CBP) will improve the quality of the birth experience for South African women by developing a culture of compassion in the public health care sector. Why focus on compassionate birth in South Africa? We aim to decrease the abuse of labouring women and improve health outcomes for labouring women and babies. Labour is a vulnerable time in every woman’s life, however, abuse of this vulnerability is marked in South Africa where: · Conditions of employment create stressed, overworked and underpaid maternity health care workers in the public sector · South Africa’s history of Apartheid has led to unhealthy power dynamics, where nurses are often still significantly inferior to doctors and other figures of authority in the health care context · Violence in communities and domestic violence is an ever present stressor in the lives of midwives and nurses · South African women do not generally have access to teachings on the physical and emotional aspects of labour and birth · Women delivering in State funded facilities frequently do not know their patient rights · Abuse of labouring women at the hands of midwives and doctors has been documented throughout South Africa.