The center will provide safe, affordable, linguistically & culturally appropriate health services & health education and will serve as a training facility for community midwives & health educators.
Tibetan women and infants are at high risk for birth-related deaths. Because of lack of access to health care, finances, language barriers & health care infrastructure, the majority of births take place in cold environments without access to electricity or running water and often at high altitude. In some rural areas, an estimated 95% of Tibetan women give birth at home. In addition, vehicles are rarely available, roads often treacherous or impassible, language & cultural barriers alienating.
Tibetan mothers and children will have access to pre-natal care; labor & delivery support; postnatal care ; community midwife & health educator training; family health education; essential Tibetan & Western medicines; kits for safe home births.
The Birth Center has the potential to be the cornerstone of a healthy Tibetan community. It can save lives of rural Tibetan women and babies and decrease the risk of disability caused by unsafe and unassisted delivery and lack of health education.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
