For Branka Stamenkovic, founder of  Mother Courage, a civil initative dedicated to the protection of pregnant women's and mothers' rights, it all started with a blog.

She recalls in the interview for Th!nk3:

Citizens' initiative "Mother Courage" was launched completely spontaneously. I was one of the women who were dissatisfied with the situation in our maternity hospitals, and with no faith that a person can change anything. I thought that it was not my business, but the business of media, minister, the heads of  hospitals ... Still I wrote a series of blog posts about my days in maternity ward for purely selfish reasons - to get it out of myself, to try somehow to heal the trauma. But then something simply unthinkable happened: a huge number of women with similar experiences wrote comments on the blog and demanded that something would be done to improve cobnditions in hospitals and maternity wards. So I gathered these stories and published them on the website that I created for this purpose (http://www.MajkaHrabrost.com), and  wrote a petition to the Minister of Health. Signatures have started to arrive at an incredible speed. And the other totally unthinkable thing then happened: Minister reacted the petition, supported our demands, and urged us to make partnership working to resolve the problem.

For a year and a half since then, many things have been initiated. Although we are far from saying that the changes are fully made, we can say that the first steps have been taken. The fastest changes are related to the conduct of health personnel: the cases of inappropriate, inhumane and often offensive communication of medical staff to pregnant women and new mothers have been reduced to sporadic cases. Additional change is the attitude of pregnant women and new mothers, who are now encouraged to report such cases to the authorities. They had previously mostly tend to keep quiet about these problems.

The greatest success of this initiative, however, is probably the fact that it has become a kind of active monitoring agent. In contrast to the previous period, now there is someone who keeps an eye on the work of the hospitals and clinics, and as a result they start behaving more responsibly. The blog (still active) from which the initiative had been launched,  became a sort of gathering place for pregnant women, mothers, health workers, representatives of relevant institutions, journalists. There we share information, ideas, tips, suggestions.
History of the civic initiative "Mother Courage" also gives hope to an ordinary citizen of this country that her or his dissatisfaction with the happenings in society or in the functioning of institutions need not be accompanied by a sense of helplessness, but by an empowerement to contribute  to the desired changes.

So, what is the current situation in Serbian health care system?

Our health system has good conditions to catch up in with the quality of health care that exists in developed countries in Europe. Health care is easily accessible to everyone, both in territorial and in terms of health insurance. The biggest challenge is  insufficient efficacy of the system. Just like the state, the health system is in the process of transition. I would dare say that the biggest obstacle to a successful transition from one system to another is the human factor. In other words: the fear of change that simply paralyze the medical establishment. Institutions that should make them overcome that fear are themselves in transition, and often suffer from the same ailments - fear of change. This vicious circle can penetrate only the third factor - the citizens. They are most interested to finally introduce changes in practice. In this regard, civil society and NGOs have a key role to articulate and channel the aspirations and demands of the general citizenry, and make them competent to face the fear of change and to win.

What are your findings about the care for maternal health in Serbia?

In countries with the highest rate of maternal mortality, the main cause lays in the inaccessibility of health care institutions or medical professionals to make a delivery. We do not have this problem. In Serbia more than 99% of deliveries are done in a medical institution in the presence of a professional. However, when we compare our results with the countries that have the same conditions, as well as to developed countries of Europe - we have unacceptably high maternal mortality – although exact data seem not to be available. Serbian Ministry of Health has done a lot in the last five years to modernize the laws and regulations in this field. Huge challenge, however, is the application of new regulations in practice. The resistance of the medical establishment to any change is enormous. They want to preserve doctor-centered way of work, instead of introducing patient-centered one. In addition, the largest number of health workers after completion of formal medical education and getting the job did not have any obligation to work on further development of their skills and knowledge. However, this has started to change too.