It takes a team

Meet Dr Howard Manyonga, the man who’s putting the ‘team’ back into birthing. Read on, especially if you don’t have medical insurance.

- MARGOT BERTELSMANN

WHAT IS THE BIRTHING TEAM, IN A NUTSHELL?

The Birthing Team is a network of maternity-care teams that offer pregnant women a complete antenatal-care package at an affordable, fixed rate, where all the costs of your normal pregnancy, labour and delivery as well as post-delivery care are included, whether you end up with an uncomplicated delivery or whether you need an emergency c-section. Each team is multidisciplinary and is made up of doctors, nurses and midwives.

IS IT AIMED AT WOMEN WHO DO NOT BELONG TO MEDICAL AID SCHEMES AND SOCIETIES? Yes, we launched The Birthing Team in 2017 in the uninsured market.

A unique feature is that we agree to a guaranteed fee upfront, and you know that you will not get unexpected additional bills. In the current system, costs are rising faster than this group of patients can afford – the whole sector is headed for disaster. The number of people who can afford medical aid is shrinking. Doctors who work on a fee-for-service model are tempted to see their small pool of paying customers too frequently – above international averages. A good work-life balance is not sustainable for them: babies come at unpredictable times, and one person can’t be available 24/7. Partly for that reason, private practitioners working alone also do not tend to promote vaginal deliveries, resulting in a 76 percent caesarean-section rate in the private sector. The average obstetrician in private practice delivers only about 13 babies per month. That’s not good use of their time when doctors working in hospital teams can oversee the delivery of up to 80 babies per month. Our private healthcare system is designed to maintain this dysfunctionality, when in fact, internationally, most babies are delivered by midwives, with referral systems in place to obstetricians in complicated cases.