Healthcare

Unhealthy attitudes: Is Irish healthcare letting our new citizens down?

Many women coming to Ireland from other countries have found themselves ignored, patronised and discriminated against in Irish healthcare settings. How can this situation be rectified?

Many ethnic minority women have been left feeling deeply frustrated by their experience of Irish healthcare

Jane Xavier was 22 weeks pregnant when she lost her first baby at an Irish maternity hospital in December 2018. The Brazilian social scientist had been admitted a fortnight earlier after her waters broke. She worried about the risk of infection, as she was placed on a ward shared with five other women.

“I raised my concerns, but nobody seemed to care,” she says. “One doctor came up to me and said, ‘We’re going to ...