In the news

2 October 2007

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) released new childbirth guidelines last week that call for more normal births, and more control for women over how and where they give birth.

Andrea Sutcliffe, Deputy Chief Executive of NICE said: "We want to make sure every woman's experience of birth is as good as it can be and have used the best available evidence to set a national standard on how midwives and doctors can make labour a positive experience for women."

Reading through these suggestions for care, they might sound like common sense, and they should be. However, few of them are followed in reality. If these few suggestions were implemented in South African hospitals, they would dramatically change the nature of birth that women experience in this country.

Some highlights:

Home births are a rare phenomenon in the Eastern Cape, but Bonita Boni found a few women in East London who have dared to defy conventional wisdom by birthing their babies their own way with the help of a midwife.