Healthcare risks, better shot at life for a child: Why Nigerian women give birth abroad

Nigerian women make up a significant proportion of foreign women giving birth in several countries.

A study done in Calgary in Canada found 24.5% of foreign women identified as having travelled abroad to give birth were from Nigeria.

Research in Chicago in the US found the majority (88%) of those seeking obstetric care in a hospital were Nigerian citizens.

In the UK, the phenomenon is labelled by some as the “Lagos Shuttle”, highlighting the high number of Nigerian women said to be so-called “birth tourists”.

It is estimated that over 23% of pregnant Nigerian women would like to travel abroad to give birth.

Why is this? As medical and legal scholars we asked women who had travelled overseas for the birth of their babies to share their experiences.

Existing research has not done enough to capture their voices, which matter in framing service delivery and immigration policies.

We reported findings from this first-of-its-kind study in PLOS Global Public Health.

As there is no registry of foreign pregnant women who gave birth abroad, it is a challenge to find them. For our study, we used social media platforms to recruit 27 Nigerian women who had given birth to at least one child abroad and conducted in-depth interviews with them to understand their motivations and experiences.

Why women do it

Of all recruited,...

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