Survival and negotiation: Narratives of severe (near-miss) neonatal complications of Syrian Women in Lebanon

Abstract

The World Health Organization has elaborated a maternal and neonatal near-miss reporting, audit and feedback system designed to improve the quality of care during and after childbirth. As part of a four-hospital comparative study in the Middle East, this article discusses the experiences of mothers whose newborns suffered from severe complications at birth in the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the only public hospital in Beirut. Based on in-depth home interviews several weeks after childbirth, it aims to explore the experience of neonatal near-miss events through the mothers’ birth narratives. The central concerns of these vulnerable and marginalised women regarded access to neonatal care, and how to negotiate hospital bureaucracy and debt. It argues that financial and bureaucratic aspects of the near-miss event should be part of the audit system and policy-making, alongside medical issues, in the quest for equitable access to and management of quality perinatal care.