Healthcare to Save Mothers and Babies

What must it be like to be pregnant during a famine, unable to feed yourself or your unborn baby, fearing for the life your child will be born into where you will not be able to provide adequate milk or food to eat when they are old enough? 

There is little food in Darfur and families survive on what they can grow. Where drought is common, the harvest is unpredictable, and this year in particular, there has been a famine worse than imaginable.   Women and children have suffered all year with nothing to sustain them and it will still be months until the harvest. A mother in Darfur works unbelievably hard to sustain her family: walking for hours across the dangerous desert to collect water, searching for wood to build a fire to keep her children warm at night, taking care of her animals and livestock, and caring for her children because she cannot afford to send them to school. Most days she will wake up not knowing how she will provide anything for her little ones to eat.  Pregnancy is something to be feared.  A recent survey in village midwives we have trained showed that anaemia is a norm and hard work and poor diet combine to cause many miscarriages - or worse. 

On top of the daily struggle a woman faces in Darfur, childbirth remains frightening and dangerous. The average age of women in rural Darfur villages is only 34 years due to the high rates of maternal mortality. There is no health care available in villages, and few go to the far-off hospital because they cannot afford to pay.  If there is an obstructed birth, rope delivery is the only possible aid but causes damage to the baby - if it survives.  With FGM a common practice in villages, obstructed labour is frequent.  At Kids for Kids we feel that it is unacceptable to do nothing to help women in Darfur give birth safely, whilst we in the UK and US give birth in the hands of a professional, with all the equipment and help we could imagine. 

We do all we can to prevent problems becoming catastrophes.   The answer for mothers in Darfur is healthcare close at hand: we need to provide midwives in every village. Women and their babies should not be dying during childbirth when we can train local women to provide the assistance necessary for safe delivery.   Please can you help us?  By supporting this project, you will save the lives of countless women who are giving birth every day with no help at all.

We are pleased to tell you that at the end of this month, 37 midwives will qualify and return to their villages to begin working.  These incredible women have spent the past 13 months studying and learnt all about basic hygiene, pre and post-natal care, safe delivery techniques, nutrition, immunization, infant care, and more. In just one month they will be fully qualified and begin their life saving practice in their own villages in Darfur. They will return home with a donkey so they can reach mothers quickly, a medical kit, uniform, mobile phone, solar lamp for night deliveries, and sandals.  Thank you all so much for making this training possible!

This year we have adopted five new villages:  Javina, Matawy, Teiga, Um Gulla and Um Jum Jum. We have just had our initial meeting with the leaders of these five villages to brief them about what they can expect for us, and what we expect from them. They were each given copies of our Project Implementation Manual which details every single thing that we do, the criteria for the volunteers who we will train, and of the beneficiaries themselves.  The leaders will return to their villages and discuss all the information with their communities before we have our first formal full village meeting. At this meeting, and the ones that follow, the community will democratically elect volunteers and beneficiaries, deciding for themselves how the projects will best benefit the village as a whole.  After this has been decided, the training of paravets, first aid workers, and midwives will begin.  In each of our new villages, as well as past villages, we ensure two women are trained as midwives, so they can support one another.

For the next midwife training course, we are hoping to have 40 midwives – but this will depend on the funding we receive. Please can you tell your friends, family, and colleagues about this project?  It is only with help from people like you that we can raise awareness about our projects, because we do not advertise. Your donations have made it possible for women to save the lives of their friends, neighbors, and family members.  With your help we can continue to train women in more villages in midwifery, empowering them, and enabling them to improve their own lives, whilst saving the lives of those around them.  Thank you!

Links:

• Other Ways to Empower Women in Darfur
• What is Life like in Darfur?