Developing a Human Rights Perspective in Sexual and Reproductive Health Care

Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT) conducted a two-day training on "Developing a Human Rights Perspective in Sexual and Reproductive Health Care", held on 21st and 22nd August 2019 at Melville Hall, International House, YMCA, Mumbai. The training saw participation from senior nursing staff of various public hospitals of Mumbai, including Bhabha Hospital, Shatabdi Hospital, MT Agarwal Hospital, and Cooper Hospital. The interactive training was divided into eight segments with each addressing a different dimension of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). The first segment, conducted by Sangeeta Rege, introduced the course to the participants and highlighted the difference between the needs of a patient and the rights of a patient. This was followed by a session on the sexual and reproductive rights of women/ girls belonging to sexual minority communities, conducted Aanchal Narang. The next session, by Tanuja Babre, addressed the subject of access to sexual and reproductive rights with a focus on challenges for women/ girls with psychosocial disabilities. In continuation of this, the next segment was conducted by Nidhi Goyal and addressed the topic of people with physical disability negotiating SRHR. These four sessions on Day I of the training were supplemented with reading material which outlined pertinent definitions, related laws and policies, and key messages for the participants. The second day commenced with a brief recap of the learning thus far and proceeded to a session on the sexual and reproductive rights of sex workers, conducted by Kiran Deshmukh. This was followed by two closely-related sessions which discussed the effect of discrimination against women on their SRHR. The first one conducted by Manjula Pradeep looked at caste-based discrimination and access to health care. The next session conducted by Hasina Khan addressed religion-based discrimination and health rights. Subsequently, the last session of the training was conducted by Dr Sonali Deshpande and focused on preventing labour room violence, highlighting thebest practices from field. The training was an opportunity to engage with more than 30 health care providers from tertiary-care hospitals and identify different dimensions of approaching SRHR of women from a humanrights perspective.

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