MediHelp Romania (www.medihelp.ro), part of MediHelp International, conducted an internal study among women clients and potential clients who plan on giving birth this year, to see what options they are considering.

Besides prenatal care, an expecting mother needs to decide upon other details of the delivery, such as: giving birth in a private hospital, a public hospital or at home. The study revealed that:

• 35% answered they would choose a public hospital for costs reasons if they did not have a health insurance;
• 65% answered they plan to or are more comfortable with giving birth within a private hospitals;
• 36% of the women who already had a baby in the public sector said they were satisfied with their care, in comparison with 91% of the ones who did so in private hospitals;
• home births and midwife care accounted for no more than 0.25% of all births;

Many women face complications during their delivery and certain interventions may be required - labour being induced, the mother being given an epidural (anesthetic in the spine for pain relief), birth by caesarean section, vacuum birth), a surgical cut to the perineum (episiotomy) to make the vaginal opening wider. The MediHelp study also revealed that:

• as many as 86% of the women said they feel at risk of developing viral and bacterial infections in Romanian hospitals and would rather give birth overseas.

Mothers stay, on average, 4 days in hospital after giving birth. Adding this up to all the other related costs (pre-natal care, delivery, post-natal care, new born care), an average/medium pregnancy cost is of 3.000 -6.000 euros, with insurance.

“One of the most common questions when giving birth in Romania is whether it should be in a private hospital, where the parents benefit from a greater degree of comfort, or in a public hospital, where conditions are not so good, but it is way cheaper in case of unexpected complications. Basically, with a private health insurance, the mother has the costs covered in Romania and in other countries, in case she opts to give birth in a specific hospital outside Romania”, stated Zahal Levy, MediHelp International President.

Medical insurance covers hospital charges, obstetrician and midwife fees for normal childbirth, pre and post-natal care (immediately following childbirth) and up to seven days’ routine care for the baby, elective C-section and childbirth at home as well as costs related to complications (C-section, breech baby, pre-eclampsia or other dangerous occurrences).

The study was conducted on 150 corporate women, having or interested in getting health insurance or already having one.