Answering the Millennium Call for the Right to Maternal Health: The Need to Eliminate User Fees

This article focuses on the adverse effects of health-care services user fees on maternal health, providing a human rights perspective. Complications during childbirth and pregnancy are a main source of death and disability among women of reproductive age, particularly in developing countries. User fees were introduced in the 1980s and promoted by the World Bank as a solution to under-funded public health care services that would improve efficiency and equity by increasing revenues. The authors argue that the user fees have an adverse impact on maternal health and should be eliminated by the global community. They hold that, in reality, user fees create barriers to affordable maternal healthcare services, particularly in emergency-care settings, and violate the rights of women to health, life and non- discrimination. The authors then explore alternatives to user fees and make recommendations for eliminating barriers to service and ensuring affordable maternal health services.

Margaux J Hall, Aziza Ahmed & Stephanie E Swanson, Answering the Millennium Call for the Right to Maternal Health: The Need to Eliminate User Fees (2009) 12 Yale Human Rts & Dev LJ 62.