Major aid donors that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on maternal health each year have denounced “disturbing” evidence collected by openDemocracy of women’s rights being violated in childbirth during the pandemic.
“My baby was taken to ICU and I was not able to see him for four days,” a mother who gave birth in Georgia in June told openDemocracy. “Since then, we have only been able to see our son once a day for one hour and were only able to hold him from the time he was ten days’ old due to ‘COVID-19 restrictions’.”
The UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) is concerned by these reports, said a spokesperson for the aid agency that spent £134 million in 2018 on global maternal and neonatal health.
