Reflections on the right to health of pregnant and pregnant women

Abstract

With the increase in the number of female prisoners, there was, consequently, an increase in the index of pregnant women and postpartum women found in the Brazilian prison system. In this context, there is a need for health care aimed at this audience, that is, prenatal consultations, guidance on pregnancy and postpartum care. The objective, then, is to reflect on the actions of health services and health promotion strategies with regard to guaranteeing the right to health of parturients and postpartum women in the prison system. This is a literature review, which used the following databases: LILACS, SciELO, BVS and the CAPES / Ministry of Education (MEC) Journal Portal, in which these descriptors were used: Prisons, Women's health, Pregnancy and Right to health. The selection criteria were: publications from the last five years, in Portuguese, available for free in their entirety, which addressed the right of pregnant women and women who had just been deprived of freedom, from guaranteeing multidisciplinary health care to the difficulties in their daily lives. As a complement, manuals from the Ministry of Health (MS) and course completion papers, dissertations and theses were used, without delimiting the time frame. Eighteen documents were selected, read and recorded to identify the main ideas. It was identified that there is enough legislation to make the prison system work, but only the legal instruments that aim at the re-education and health of these pregnant women are not fully complied with in practice. The incarceration situation makes this assistance difficult and can cause several losses to the pregnancy, due to basic unmet needs, such as: sleep, rest and food. In addition to the increase in social vulnerability, compromising well-being, due to the precarious conditions of the prison environment. It is concluded, therefore, that, although pregnancy is a phase in which women need comprehensive and multidisciplinary health care, being their right, most of the time, negligence occurs, since the health offer to pregnant women and puerperal women in prison is deficient. Therefore, it is pertinent to work on this theme so that more people can fight for its effectiveness.