Healthcare & Violence against Women Campaign

DSCI0613The campaign concerning the role of healthcare in protecting women from domestic and partnership based violence has started today in Pancevo. It is implemented by the Provincial Secretariat of Healthcare, Welfare and Demographics (PSHWD) in collaboration with the Provincial Protector of Citizens - Ombudsman PPCO and is supposed to bring together representatives of primary healthcare units, hospitals, the district Public Health Institutes, patients' rights protectors and members of the Healthcare Councils with the local self-governments in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (APV).  

The first workshop was held in the seat of the seat of the local self-government in Pancevo. The presenters were Danijela Stankovic Baricak, MD, Assistant to the Provincial Secretary of Healthcare, Welfare and Demographics, Biljana Delic, the Head of Planning and Analysis Section in the Provincial Secretariat, Vasa Petrovic, MD, PhD, General Manager of the Primary Healthcare Unit in the Municipality of Indjija, Gender Equality Deputy Ombudswoman Danica Todorov and Andrijana Covic, a PPCO Associate. In the light of domestic and partnership based violence against women, they spoke about its indicators and implications as related to healthcare, detection and documentation as a precondition to its systemic prevention through institutions in charge, as well as experience in healthcare handling cases of such violence.    

The discussion concerned the causes of the healthcare response to domestic violence during the first contact with its victims not being always adequate. Sometimes it is so due to the lack of sensibility with the staff, but more often, particularly in the ER, it is due to understaffing that patients, including victims of violence, are waiting for a long time to get treated. The attendees' experience is that there are a lot of cases of good work of institutions in charge, as well as space for improvement in their operation. Besides increasing resources in healthcare, proper approach and efficient treatment need a better relation to and communication with the victims, information on domestic and partnership based violence against women and professional training, along with inter-institutional collaboration. Each case emerging within the healthcare system must be entered into the reporting person's health records, so injuries and the condition of victims immediately after the violent incident could be documented and victims protected.

The forthcoming workshops with healthcare service representatives will be hosted by the Public Health Institutes in Kikinda, Subotica, Zrenjanin, Sremska Mitrovica and Novi Sad from January to March.