Women and health in South Africa – here are things you might have wondered about, but never knew who to ask for an answer.

The following facts are extracts from a National Household Survey of Health Inequalities in South Africa written by Joan de Castro and Ros Hirschowitz. The sample of 2653 female respondents was proportionally representative of the 11504000 women in South Africa between the ages of 16 and 64.

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Pregnancy and ante-natal care

• 81 percent of the women had been pregnant at least once in their lives.
• 80 percent had given birth at least once.
• 70 percent of white women had been pregnant at least once in their lives.
• 89 percent of all pregnant women had received ante-natal care.
• 84 percent of African women living on white-owned farms received ante-natal care.
• One in three of those who received no schooling, failed to go for ante-natal care.
• 14 percent of women are considered to live below the minimum living level (the bread line) and one in every seven of those failed to go for ante-natal care, as opposed to one in twenty of those living above it.
• All respondents with post-school training went for ante-natal care.
• Disabled and chronically ill Africans had less access to ante-natal care than the average – one in every six women from this category did not go for ante-natal care.

Childbirth

• 98 percent of white women and 96 percent of Indian women gave birth in hospitals or clinics.
• A quarter of Africans and 16 percent of Coloureds gave birth in their homes.
• 58 percent of those with no education gave birth in their homes.
• Only 2 percent of those with post-school qualifications chose to give birth at home.
• Home births are unusual in the Western Cape – only four percent as opposed to 34 percent in Mpumalanga.
• 22 percent of African women do not have a health professional present at the birth.

Deaths during pregnancy and Childbirth

• Those living in informal settlements in urban areas were more likely to report a death in the family in the past year during a pregnancy – seven percent as opposed to 3 percent in formal housing in metropolitan areas.
• Three in every 100 Africans had a family member who had died in pregnancy or childbirth compared to fewer than one in every 100 whites.

(Susan Erasmus, Health24)

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