Pregnant migrants struggle to get adequate healthcare

The health of pregnant asylum seekers living in a Home Office hotel is at risk because of the difficulty they face accessing medical services, campaigners and local midwives have warned.

- MAYA OPPENHEIM

Frontline workers supporting mothers-to-be and women with newborns living at the Novotel Hotel in Stevenage said some were forced to walk for miles in their slippers and without coats days before their babies were due to get basic supplies.

They claim there have been cases of highly infectious diseases including scabies and diphtheria at the hotel, and there are concerns that the women have limited access to the right foods to support their pregnancies.

Ros Bragg, director of Maternity Action, a leading national maternity rights charity, said the poor conditions the women face in Stevenage are mirrored in hotels across the country. A local midwife, who did not want to be named but has visited the hotel, said the new mothers there are "distressed" and that many have health issues due to having received little or no medical care during their pregnancies.

"They are the most vulnerable women I've seen in my career," she said. "Some colleagues have come away from the hotel in tears. The women I've seen are from Albania, Georgia, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have come through very traumatic experiences and now they are being retraumatised."

She said one pregnant woman her team is supporting has escaped domestic abuse in her home country, where her former partner's family threatened to kill her, while another is fleeing threatened violence in a case of honour-based abuse. "One woman's children and her partner have been sent to Croydon, but she got sent here. None of these women speaks English. It is really upsetting. It is like they have given them freedom, but they are not really free. They are in prison because they are isolated and have a lack of choices."