According to a study by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the UMC Amsterdam, the UMC Groningen and the Amsterdam Obstetrics Academy Amsterdam Groningen (AVAG), more women gave birth at home in the corona year 2020 than in the year before the pandemic.
To arrive at the results, the researchers studied 5,913 women who, according to the obstetrician, had a low risk of pregnancy complications. Of these nearly 6,000 women, half were pregnant in 2020 (during the pandemic) and the other half in 2019 (before the pandemic).
It was later found that 23.8% of women gave birth at home in 2020, compared to 20.1% of births a year ago. This is a difference of 3.7 percentage points. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is. “The number of home births has been declining for years,” says Corine Verhoeven, principal researcher and professor of obstetrics. NAMEI
In addition, the number of women who indicate that they want to give birth at home during the corona period is higher. “In retrospect, it seems to have relieved the already overloaded hospitals,” says Verhoeven. For her, this was no problem for Dutch maternity care: “We have a well-functioning system with excellent collaboration between primary care midwives and hospitals. This allowed women to choose where to give birth during such a crisis. It’s like an epidemic.”
The research has been published in the scientific journal BirthI
Source: NU
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
