Reviewer's report
Title:Standpoints of Roma women regarding reproductive health
Version:4Date:29 January 2015
Reviewer: Katarina Sedlecky
Reviewer's report:
The article entitled “Standpoints of Roma women regarding reproductive health”
is focused on the very interesting and important topic, as it is well known that
Romanies usually maintain their traditional lifestyle and attitude towards
childbearing regardless of the country they live in. Additionally, methodology is
well designed and currently very popular. The authors used statements of Roma
women to achieve deeper insight in the opinions of investigated subjects.
However, there are several remarks that should be taken into consideration.
The first one is that not aspects of reproductive health were defined. This article
described that the majority of Roma women regularly attend gynaecologic clinic
during pregnancy and have deliveries in maternity hospitals. If those women
don’t have regular gynaecologic examinations how are they provided with
contraception? What is their birth control model? How do they prevent unplanned
pregnancies? What about induced abortion – do Roma women have induced
abortions or they continue unplanned pregnancies to the delivery. Are Roma
women informed about cervical cancer screening?
The authors stated that husband and wife are frequently equal when they make
decision regarding contraception. I would not agree that the proof of equity is that
woman is left to decide on the use of contraception.
There is nothing about the age when Roma women start childbearing, and if their
marriages are arranged by parents or are based on love and their decision.
I was interested in the number of children, number of abortions and contraceptive
use of investigated Roma women, as well.
The discussion should be better structured – it is comprised mostly of findings
and interpretation and relevance of the findings, but other parts, like strengths
and weaknesses, differences in relation to other studies, are missing.
Conclusions do not correspond to the aims, and need to be rewritten.
The English should be improved, as well as the writing style. Namely, sentences
are too long, and in some parts imprecise.
On the other hand, the authors made a great effort and used very good,
unbiased methodology. It is evident that this manuscript was made by them.
Therefore, I think that they should have the opportunity to improve this
manuscript. So, my proposal is to invite them to rewrite the article and submit
again, as ‘Major Compulsory Revisions (which the author must respond to before
a decision on publication can be reached)’
The references should be changed to match the demands of the BMC.
The article entitled “Standpoints of Roma women regarding reproductive health”
is focused on the very interesting and important topic, as it is well known that
Romanies usually maintain their traditional lifestyle and attitude towards
childbearing regardless of the country they live in. Additionally, methodology is
well designed and currently very popular. The authors used statements of Roma
women to achieve deeper insight in the opinions of investigated subjects.
However, there are several remarks that should be taken into consideration.
The first one is that not aspects of reproductive health were defined. This article
described that the majority of Roma women regularly attend gynaecologic clinic
during pregnancy and have deliveries in maternity hospitals. If those women
don’t have regular gynaecologic examinations how are they provided with
contraception? What is their birth control model? How do they prevent unplanned
pregnancies? What about induced abortion – do Roma women have induced
abortions or they continue unplanned pregnancies to the delivery. Are Roma
women informed about cervical cancer screening?
The authors stated that husband and wife are frequently equal when they make
decision regarding contraception. I would not agree that the proof of equity is that
woman is left to decide on the use of contraception.
There is nothing about the age when Roma women start childbearing, and if their
marriages are arranged by parents or are based on love and their decision.
I was interested in the number of children, number of abortions and contraceptive
use of investigated Roma women, as well.
The discussion should be better structured – it is comprised mostly of findings
and interpretation and relevance of the findings, but other parts, like strengths
and weaknesses, differences in relation to other studies, are missing.
Conclusions do not correspond to the aims, and need to be rewritten.
The English should be improved, as well as the writing style. Namely, sentences
are too long, and in some parts imprecise.
On the other hand, the authors made a great effort and used very good,
unbiased methodology. It is evident that this manuscript was made by them.
Therefore, I think that they should have the opportunity to improve this
manuscript. So, my proposal is to invite them to rewrite the article and submit
again, as ‘Major Compulsory Revisions (which the author must respond to before
a decision on publication can be reached)’
The references should be changed to match the demands of the BMC.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.