A nurse holds a newborn baby Photo: EPA/PAULO CUNHA

After a Croatian MP shared her own “painful” experience of the country’s hospital system and raised the issue of women’s health care last week, Health Minister Milan Kujundzic on Monday received more than 400 letters from women complaining about their own traumatic experiences in hospitals.

The action #BreaktheSilence2018 (#PrekinimoSutnju2018) was organised by Parents in action – Roda, an NGO that advocates dignified pregnancy, parenthood and childhood.

Via social networks, it invited all women who have a bad experience of the medical system to write it down on paper, together with a location and a date, take a photo and send it to them.

The organization organised a similar campaign in 2016 but the response has been much wider this time.

Minister Kujundzic has meanwhile promised more hospital inspections. “We appreciate the remarks, we will check everything,” he said after meeting representatives of the NGO.

He also promised special information training for pregnant women so that they can know more about what they can access through the Health Insurance Institute.

Kujundzic retained his position last Friday after a no-confidence vote failed to unseat him.

However, MP Ivana Nincevic Lesandric’s personal story of having an abortion in a hospital, which she shared in parliament on Thursday, has revived a public debate on the state of women’s health care.

The MP from the centre-right MOST [Bridge] party, explained the “extremely painful” procedure she underwent in which doctors allegedly tied her hands and legs before performing a curettage to remove tissues from inside the uterus – without anesthesia. She described the conditions as from the “15th century”.

“This was the 30 most painful minutes of my life,” Nincevic Lesandric added, claiming that many Croatian women had experienced similar.

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