By Laura Soucy | Annual Giving Manager
Thank you so much for supporting Partners In Health and our work to bring quality health care to women and babies living in rural Lesotho.
Working directly with Lesotho’s Ministry of Health, PIH has provided support and training for 8,000 Village Health Workers and significantly increased the number of facility-based deliveries. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we continue to help women like Tebello, who—without the support and accompaniment of a Village Health Worker—are in danger of losing their lives in childbirth.
Tebello is like a lot of expectant mothers living in very remote, resource-poor settings. Her village in Lesotho is miles and miles away from the nearest clinic—three hours by foot. Traveling long distances while pregnant is often difficult and deters many women from seeking care. But for Tebello, the trip was basically impossible. She has a disability and is unable to walk.
Her story could have been tragic if it weren’t for a PIH/Lesotho Village Health Worker who discovered the mother-to-be only days before she was due to give birth. Knowing how important it was for Tebello and her baby to have the proper medical care, the Village Health Worker arranged to have her carried on a stretcher to the nearest village with access to a road. From there, she and Tebello were taken by car to the clinic.
Because of Tebello’s disability, her son was delivered by cesarean section. Had she delivered at home, she would have faced childbirth alone, with no trained medical professional who knew what do when seconds made the difference. It could have been tragic. Any complication could have resulted in death.
With the village health worker’s support and accompaniment, Tebello and her son survived. They stayed at the clinic after the delivery to ensure the health of both mother and baby and they returned for a postnatal visit.
Your continued support of PIH’s Maternal Mortality Reduction Project in Lesotho reaches women like Tebello every day, and we are incredibly grateful for your partnership in delivering quality health care to some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
