Routine Enquiry for Domestic Violence during Antenatal Care: An Opportunity to Improve Women’s Health - Revista Brasileira de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia

Routine Enquiry for Domestic Violence during Antenatal Care: An Opportunity to Improve Women’s Health |

Violence against women has been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a health problem and a human rights violation with epidemic proportions which requires an urgent action. Worldwide it is estimated that ∼1 in 3 women have suffered physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. The United Nations considered as violence against women “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”

Domestic violence (DV), family violence (FV) and intimate partner violence (IPV) are terms frequently observed in the literature. Unfortunately, domestic environment it is a place where many women might suffer violence perpetrated by relatives, former or current partner, showing that particularly their homes could be unsafe places from many women around the world.

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