On Monday, the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA) held a roundtable on obstetric violence, or abuses women face during childbirth in hospitals. Discussions focused on ways to improve childbirth services and rights-based, dignified maternal healthcare.
The event followed widespread debate sparked by physician Omnia Swedan’s testimony on Facebook in June, in which she described what she called “systematic violations” against women, including sexual harassment during childbirth, physical abuse, and the denial of emergency medical care for moral or social reasons.
Following that testimony, the Economic Misdemeanors Court sentenced Omnia Swedan on Saturday to six months in prison, suspended for three years, and fined her 20,000 Egyptian pounds (about $400) after convicting her on two charges related to “publishing false news and information online about El-Shatby University Hospital.”
Health is not a priority
Opening the discussion, Azza Soliman, chair of CEWLA’s board of trustees, voiced reservations about how official and professional bodies handled Swedan’s case. She stressed that obstetric violence did not begin with Swedan’s Facebook post, but had long been documented by researchers and physicians.
Speaking to Al Manassa on the sidelines of the event, Soliman said the crisis extends beyond obstetric violence to Egypt’s healthcare system as a whole, arguing that the sector has deteriorated sharply because health spending has declined in the state budget in favor of other government priorities.
“The government is borrowing money to develop the desert, so there’s no health care, no education, and no consideration of what people actually need,” she said, stressing that obstetric violence cannot be addressed without sufficient funding of the country’s healthcare system.
Women’s health consultant Dr. Farida Mahgoub then outlined four main categories of obstetric violence, saying two require immediate action and cannot be tolerated. The first involves violations of dignity and respect, including verbal and physical abuse, humiliation, shouting, insults, blaming women during labor, or even taping a woman’s mouth or legs to restrict her movement during childbirth.
CEWLA event on obstetric violence, July 6, 2026The second category, Mahgoub said, involves medical negligence and failures in clinical care, including not following proper medical procedures or ignoring women’s needs during childbirth, such as failing to provide pain relief.
She called for an effective complaints and reporting system within the Health Ministry and the Doctors Syndicate, along with stronger legal avenues to ensure accountability. She questioned how women are expected to prove abuses in court when violations occur in shared delivery rooms without clear reporting mechanisms.
Mahgoub said the third and fourth categories involve violations of women’s autonomy and reproductive rights and violations of privacy. Addressing these issues, she said, requires gradual cultural and institutional change to allow women to participate in developing their birth plans, while also improving hospital infrastructure, including the widespread use of shared labor wards.
She added that even with limited resources, simple steps could better protect women’s privacy, such as installing curtains between beds in shared delivery rooms.
Systematic deterioration
Maha Abdel Nasser, a member of parliament from the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, said obstetric violence is a reality in both public and private hospitals, but attributed it to what she described as the “systematic deterioration” of Egypt’s healthcare system over decades. She also accused the government of failing to direct international health and education grants to their intended purposes.
She defended resident physicians, who often work shifts lasting up to 36 consecutive hours while treating more patients than hospitals are equipped to handle amid shortages of medical supplies and basic pain medication.
“A doctor may have 10 women in the labor ward, only four beds, and six more women screaming on the floor while he doesn’t know what to do,” she said.
Abdel Nasser stressed she was not excusing doctors’ behavior, “but they’re human beings in the end,” referring to the exhaustion many face.
She also criticized the wording of Swedan’s post about El-Shatby Hospital, saying it unfairly reflected on doctors as a whole and frightened women, particularly in Upper Egypt, away from teaching hospitals and back toward unsafe home births.
She argued that before condemning doctors, responsibility should be assigned to those who allowed the healthcare system to deteriorate without making a serious effort to reverse its decline.
Still, she said violence against women has reached “a point where it is no longer acceptable to remain silent,” announcing that she has adopted a comprehensive anti-violence bill in parliament to address all forms of violence through legislation.
National charter for “safe childbirth”
Coinciding with the roundtable, the Doctors Syndicate announced Monday that a joint committee had completed a “National Charter to Promote Safe and Dignified Care During Pregnancy and Childbirth,” aimed at guaranteeing women’s right to safe, respectful delivery.
Syndicate Assistant Secretary-General Dr. Khaled Amin told Al Manassa that the syndicate deliberately used the term “safe childbirth” instead of “obstetric violence,” arguing that the latter creates hostility between doctors and patients. He said individual abuses are often linked to shortcomings in the healthcare system, including shortages of pain medication.
Amin said the syndicate acknowledges that some healthcare providers have committed abuses. The new charter, therefore, proposes establishing a hotline for complaints in coordination with the relevant national councils and the Health Ministry, with a defined timetable for investigations and protections for complainants.
Asked about the syndicate’s position on Swedan’s case and whether it had supported her, Amin said she had not formally requested union assistance. He also expressed reservations about the language used in her post, adding that the syndicate had received information indicating a decline in pregnant women’s visits to the obstetrics department at El-Shatby Hospital in Alexandria after the post circulated, with some women opting for home births out of fear and concern over social stigma, resulting in deaths.
