Ensure a Safe Birth for Mothers in the West Bank

MADRE Executive Director Yifat Susskind is currently on her way to Palestine, where she will meet with the Midwives for Peace on April 18 to celebrate their 5 year anniversary as an organization! For the past 5 years, Israeli and Palestinian midwives have been meeting every few months to collaborate on small, local projects and provide prenatal and neonatal care to women. To mark this important milestone, all 25 midwives who have been with the group since its inception will gather to celebrate each other and the courageous work that they do.

During the celebration, Play-Life, an Israeli improvisational theater group will provide entertainment for the midwives. Also, MADRE, along with our partners at COHI, are happy to be able to donate items from Maternova to the midwives to support and reinforce their vital work. Each midwife will receive a solar powered light to work effectively at night and in areas without reliable electricity as well as a hemoglobin color scale kit to quickly and easily test their patients for anemia.

Happy 5^th Anniversary to Midwives for Peace!

We recently received a message from Midwives for Peace telling us about their most recent meeting. We’d like to share this update with you now.

On October 23, 2012, we met to watch "Freedom for Birth", a film that highlights human rights violations related to childbirth, and calls for the radical reform of childbirth systems around the world. With MADRE’s support, we received permission from the producers of the film to add Arabic subtitles, so that all members of the group could watch and discuss the film, as it relates to our work as midwives.

The film tells the story of Agnes Gereb, a Hungarian midwife who was imprisoned for performing home births in her country. This is particularly relevant as we just received an update from Halla that the Palestinian Ministry of Health has decided to prohibit home births in the West Bank. This will of course influence Halla's ability to continue her work as a home birth midwife, and we pray to hear better news on this issue.
 
The rest of the meeting was spent writing about our personal experiences as members of Midwives for Peace for a chapter in a book being written about different midwifery models worldwide.

Our next meeting is scheduled for January 14, 2013. We look forward to sharing more updates with you after this meeting.

We’re our proud of our ongoing partnership with Midwives for Peace, an incredible project coordinated by Israeli and Palestinian midwives. Midwives for Peace is dedicated to ensuring a safe and beautiful birthing experience for Palestinian women despite the violence that surrounds them. We recently received an update on the project from Gomer Ben Moshe, our partner and an Israeli midwife:

After postponing the meeting twice, we finally got together sweating and happy, missing on some of our friends but ready to participate a neonatal resuscitation course with Lina Hury, a pediatric nurse who joined us for this purpose.
Lina gave the theoretical background for neonatal resuscitation and the new guidelines, and then we practiced with equipment and dolls which Lina brought along with her.

We all felt it was important and very useful to do this course in group of mainly midwives and nurses. We all thanked Lina very much for volunteering with us!

At the end of the meeting we gave our Palestinian sister Amina a fetal monitor which we purchased for Hala for the birthing center in Mitaloon. Amina will give it to Hala ASAP.

The next meeting will take place in October.

We just received an exciting update from our partners at Midwives for Peace! They are busy planning for their next meeting later this month, where they will exchange tips, stories, midwifery courses and more! 

Midwives for Peace trains midwives to deliver babies safely, despite the conflict that surrounds them. Midwives from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian border come together regularly to attend workshops to share midwifery techniques. Their efforts so far have improved the lives of hundreds of women and babies on both sides of the conflict.

At this month’s meeting, they will attend a special workshop with an emphasis on nursing for newborn infants.  They are looking forward to learning from the course’s instructor, a bilingual Arabic-Hebrew neonatal nurse with years of experience.

These regular meetings offer a rare respite from struggle and conflict, and they couldn’t happen without your support. Please stay tuned for a full report back soon!  

We just received an update from our sister organization, Midwives for Peace! They sent us news about their recent meeting, which brought together 15 Palestinian and Israeli midwives to exchange their knowledge and expertise.

This was a special meeting, thanks to the support you provide through MADRE. They brought Halla, one of their members from the West Bank, a new ultrasound machine!

Halla is preparing to open a new birthing center soon, and this ultrasound machine will be crucial to making sure that mothers in the West Bank can give birth safely. The Israeli military has destroyed or barricaded thousands of roads there, making it difficult for Palestinian women who are in labor to reach hospitals. Halla’s birthing center will be a vital alternative.

“We thank you from the bottom of our hearts,” said the midwives. “It feels so good to know we have partners who care and work hard for us…You are in our minds and in our hearts!”