Healthcare to Save Mothers and Babies

We have had such an exciting summer at Kids for Kids! You will be thrilled to hear that we have just held three Inception Meetings  in our five new villages. The leaders and community members of Ashabarack, Fardal, Geleidat, Um Jadoul and Hashab Baraka have come together to commit to supporting our projects for the good of everyone in the village. At these meetings, they have selected the volunteers who will be trained as midwives, paravets and first aid workers.

Three weeks ago the midwives started their training in El Fasher! Some of these women may have never been to El Fasher before and now they will be studying there for 14 months, learning to read and write, and training to become midwives. When they complete their training they will go back to their villages and be able to ensure safe delivery for mothers and babies during childbirth.  It is amazing that these five villages will each have two midwives who will be able to greatly reduce the chances of problems during birth. As Female Genital Mutilation sadly still common in this area, the dangerous method of rope delivery is common practice during an obstructed labour. This needs to end, and these midwives in training will soon be able to return to their villages, implementing their knowledge and safe practices to keep women and children from dying during birth.  Thank you for your help in making this happen.  You are a hero!

It is so important that we continue to train women to be midwives and provide life-saving care in their villages.   Your gifts will help us to train more midwives, so children and mothers in other villages can have the safe deliveries and healthy lives.  Would you consider a donation to help?  Thank you so much.

Links:

• http://www.kidsforkids.org.uk

It is difficult to imagine having no access to health care.   In the remote villages of North Darfur, there is no help within reach.     In the first village we adopted 16 years ago, a community of just over 2,000 people, called Um Ga’al, the nearest hospital was 80 miles away across desert scrub.  There were no roads.   The journey was so hazardous that people chose not to go, which meant that many problems spiralled out of control and people died needlessly.    But although the hospital had a doctor, it had no anaesthetic, no oxygen and beds were empty because people could not afford to pay medical fees.   Sixteen years later, little has changed although there are now two doctors in the hospital and Kids for Kids has provided basic medical equipment including a proper sterilising unit instead of the camping gas burner and metal tray they had used in 2001.   There are still no roads and without Kids for Kids mothers in labour would still have to go to hospital on the back of a donkey. 

Thankfully we have been providing two village midwives in each of our villages, transforming the health of both mothers and their babies.    Not only that, but we are now building Health Units and providing medical drugs.  

Nadia was one of the first midwives we trained.   In the first year she delivered over 800 healthy babies, and managed to persuade 14 mothers to go to the hospital in time to have caesarean sections when she realised, thanks to her training, that they were unlikely to be able to deliver their babies naturally.  

This year, thanks to our supporters, we are training ten new midwives in the five villages we are adopting in 2017.   At the village meetings when volunteers are democratically elected for training, Ahmed Adam, Sheikh of Absharback said “It is an honour for a lady to be chosen to be trained by Kids for Kids as our first midwife.   Perhaps our young women will no longer fear childbirth as they used to do.    I lost my first wife when she had our son and hope that now this will not happen to another child.    If only we had had our own midwives years ago.   Thank you Kids for Kids.”

Links:

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