Mercy In Action has long established birth centers for the poorest in the Philippines, delivering over 15,900 babies free of charge since 1991. Now we have just finished building a new clinic & birth center on land owned by a local family much loved and trusted within Mercy In Action. This Midwife-led Birth Center is already shining in our community with loving health care for local families! Now we are finishing it by adding a meeting room on the roof and finishing off the inside furnishings.
The problem is that women in many parts of the Philippines do not have easy access to health care while pregnant, and they cannot afford the hospital or private clinics when it comes time to give birth. As a result, women get no prenatal care, and babies die. Mothers and babies are both at risk to die in childbirth when they have no skilled birth attendant to care for them during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, due to anemia, hemorrhage, infection, hypertension disorders, and obstructed labor.
This project, built right in their community, has the potential to empower women to have healthy babies. It will also save lives on a massive scale in the decades to come by preventing maternal and newborn mortality surrounding childbirth. We can prevent the most common causes of maternal death during childbirth, and prevent anemia and malnutrition in the pregnant women, preventing prematurity and infection in the baby. Mothers will deliver in a safe, compassionate environment
Mercy In Action has provided 15,200 free deliveries in the Philippine! Our statistics were published by medical anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd in "Birth Models That Work" as a model. We know this for sure: Our birth centers are saving lives, as our neonatal survival rate is 4 times better than the country of the Philippines stats. Women say that to birth at Mercy In Action is to be empowered to survive, to have a healthy baby, and to be better mothers! This new building will multiply that!
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
