ARDI sent a letter to the Government of the Republic of Serbia following a tragic death of a new-born. ARDI Members are saddened to learn about a new-born Elena Novakov who died on January 13th in a hospital in Serbia. A heart-breaking testimony of her mother points to a serious case of obstetric violence, in a form of both physical and verbal abuse of the mother, including racist and other insults, resulting in the death of her new-born. <\/span><\/p>\n

According to Ms Mihajlovi\u0107\u00b4 testimony, that she shared on social media and with a number of national media outlets, despite clear indications for an emergency C-section and after multiple hours of inducted labor without water and food, she was forced to give birth vaginally. Despite Ms. Mihajlovi\u0107\u2019s\u00a0 multiple desperate pleads to take her to the operating room and save her baby, the doctor not only ignored her call for help, he hit her, squeezed her jaw, started threatening her with further violence, and even told her that he will \u00b4\u00b4smash her head\u00b4\u00b4 and offended her based on her Roma ethnicity. Without her consent the doctor preformed the Kristeler maneuver (applying fundal pressure by forcibly pushing or jumping on her stomach in order to forcefully move the baby to the birthing canal) and induced her labor using medication. The Kristeller maneuver is not recommended by the WHO and they state that \u201cif non-consented, or applied indiscriminately and with excessive force, applying fundal pressure could be considered an abuse of a woman\u2019s human rights\u201d (WHO 2018, 157). This maneuver left Ms. Mihajlovi\u0107 seriously injured, she lost consciences and the baby was delivered using vacuum extraction. Immediately after birth, the baby started experiencing problems that caused more complications with their lungs. The baby\u00b4s lungs soon after stopped functioning and their\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 hearth stopped beating. The pediatric doctors managed to bring the baby back to life, but unfortunately not long after that, the baby died.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a testimony of another Romani woman indicates that this is not the first such incident involving the same doctor abusing pregnant Romani women, nor is it the first time this has allegedly resulted in a death of a baby.<\/span><\/p>\n

We urged Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to create conditions for a just investigation of this cases. The responsible obstetrician must be brought to justice. <\/span><\/p>\n

We further called on the Government of Serbia to provide full and holistic support for the families. <\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, we urge the competent authorities to investigate the possibility of racial motive, and that the offense based on Roma ethnicity is treated as an indicator of possible racial bias.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Government of Serbia must support individuals and organisations fighting against obstetric and any form of gender based and racist violence in Serbia and do everything that is in your power to prevent similar cases from happening in future.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ARDI sent a letter to the Government of the Republic of Serbia following a tragic death of a new-born. ARDI Members are saddened to learn about a new-born Elena Novakov who died on January 13th in a hospital in Serbia….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[619,620,46,95,621],"class_list":["post-7487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters","tag-letters","tag-obstetric-violence","tag-racism","tag-roma","tag-serbia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7487"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7491,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487\/revisions\/7491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardi-ep.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}