Details of the case
Hi guys,
I'm Hungarian, and I run
budapest-moms.com and I wrote many of the articles you'll find there.
Dr. Ágnes Geréb was indeed arrested on October 5th, ironically, for assisting a birth that she had declined attending because she felt the mother was high risk. Apparently the mother showed up in advanced labor at the birth center anyway, and when the baby was born, he was basically without respiration and circulation. They called the ambulance immediately, but the ambulance apparently also alerted the police.
There's a long and complicated story behind Dr. Geréb's career. She is not the only home birth midwife in Hungary, but she is the only one who has taken up the cause and is thus giving her face and name to the movement. The others are basically in hiding. She started out as an OB, worked as such for 17 years, then transitioned to home births, and she has been a home birth midwife for 15 years. She has attended about 3500 births at home, of these, there were 2 fatalities that I know of... one shoulder dystocia and one a twin birth where the second twin suffered oxygen deprivation during birth and died at 7 months of age. (It's late here where I am, and now I can't seem to recall whether there was a 3rd death... even so, her rate is still under 1 in 1000.)
She completely divides Hungarian public opinion. Most people think she is criminally insane and ought to be locked up for the rest of her life. The idea of home birth is basically unknown in Hungary, except in connection with her name and the criminal charges that have been pressed against her over the years. (Which is ironic, because a mere two-hour drive from our capital, in Austria, home birth is legal... )
I totally admire her cause, but it does seem that she has had a number of opportunities to compromise with the health care system and work things out with hospitals. At one point, they had even offered her and her staff access to a midwife-only birthing room at one Hungarian hospital so she could transfer women there if necessary and continue their care there, if only she agreed not to attend high risk cases at home, such as twin births. But she declined. And so she lost that opportunity. There may have been other instances I don't know about.
So, even though I admire her cause, I don't think she's a very clever "politician." I think she should have agreed to some compromises and then work from within to change the system a bit, but that's just my personal opinion.
At any rate, now she is a martyr for the cause, which is a worthy one, but I'm not convinced it couldn't have been done without her landing in jail. For what it's worth.
However, now that she IS in jail, the whole idea of home birth is getting a lot of media attention, so we are trying to ride that wave and get some regulations passed. Hungarian women have the right to choose their place of birth, but anybody who tries to assist at a home birth may have criminal charges pressed if any complications arise. This is because there are no regulations for home birth, so it's basically a legal gap that home birth workers fall into. Finally, the issue is getting enough attention, both in Hungary and internationally, that we may have enough pressure on the government to finally draft the regulations governing home birth. Unfortunately, the way it looks now, they're working with a team of doctors and hospital-based midwives trying to work out these regulations, and nobody with out-of-hospital birth experience has been invited, even though there are a number of people in the country with such experience, and we even have a few who have degrees from the US in home birth midwifery.
At any rate, I hope this clarifies things a bit. If you would like to help this cause, please go to
http://www.budapest-moms.com/2010/10...p-agnes-gereb/ to see how you can help.
Réka
I do know that this arrest reflects the attitude of authorities and the "general public" in most Eastern European countries. We live in Eastern Europe too, and I could see this happening to the one midwife that attends homebirths in this country easily. What are your thoughts?
