LDR Rooms Encourage Natural Childbirth

Establishment of LDR (labor-delivery-recovery) rooms in hospitals for the first time is one of the achievements of the 2014 Health Reform Plan under the outgoing Rouhani administration.

“These rooms now number 2,022 across the country,” said Amir Saki, director general of the Health Ministry’s physical resources and development management office, on Thursday.

LDR rooms, where women can give birth and stay for 2 hours after delivery, were set up in 350 hospitals with the aim to encourage natural births by providing a pleasant, private environment for the mothers-to-be, IRNA reported.

Prior to the reform plan, delivery rooms also called ‘labor rooms,’ were traditional with minimum facilities and were cold and clinical. “We have since then introduced standards on par with LDR rooms across the world” to create a nurturing environment that can be comforting for new moms.

One of the main goals of the Health Reform Plan is to reduce cesarean delivery by improving safety in natural childbirth. As the first step towards reducing c-section, the Health Ministry declared natural delivery free of cost in all state-run hospitals. The measure has so far helped reduce c-sections by almost 7%.

Previously, the c-section rate was 56.5% of all births but has now dropped to 50%. The World Health Organization recommends that the rate of c-section should be 15% of all births, and Iran still is a long way from reaching the global standards in natural childbirth.

Creating specialized hospital wards for natural deliveries where the role of the midwife is significant, and optimizing the existing ones, are measures by the ministry aimed at safe natural delivery.

 Coping With Labor Pain

In addition, hospitals offer childbirth and prenatal education classes to prepare pregnant women for the birth experience and parenting classes after delivery.

Free 8-session educational courses have been provided to nearly 200,000 pregnant women in childbirth skills centers established in 15 universities of medical sciences.

During the preparatory courses women are taught how to cope with labor pain.  Around 30,000 midwives across the country provide a wide range of services to expectant mothers. The main goal of the training centers is to encourage mothers to give birth to their babies normally with the least pain.  

“We have plans to add a bathtub to every LDR room so women can also take advantage of water treatment services,” said Farah Babaee, head of the Midwifery Office at the ministry.

During the previous fiscal year (ended March 20), 2,000 midwives were recruited for labor wards in state-run hospitals, which is still short by 2,000 to meet the national demand.

Annually, around 1.5 million births are registered in Iran. In 2013, infant mortality was 15 per 1000 births and decreased to 13.8 in 2015.