By Elsa Varghese | Manager- Resource Mobilisation & Communications
Ashwini is a 21 year old resident of Bawachi village which is 36 km from our SPARSH hospital. She belongs to a very poor family and her husband works as a farm labour in a joint family having 9 members. Ashwini was 9 months pregnant, and living in a remote village posed challenges in finding a transport to ferry her to the hospital. She and her husband came to know about the excellent services at the hospital a year ago and had decided that they would want the delivery to happen only at SPARSH even though they had to travel far. Ashwini started complaining of pain in the abdomen since 6 am in the morning, after hours of toil her husband and grandmother brought Ashwini to SPARSH by local transport at 12:30 pm in the afternoon.
Ashwini was not just undergoing the pain of labour for the first time but also had a lot of complications that came with it . She was suffering from pregnancy induced hypertention and was also anaemic. She was given 2 bottles of blood and other injectables important to allow a safe delivery . Remembering the day her husband says ‘I’m so thankful to the SPARSH team for their continuous monitoring and support, my wife was saved because they were alert and arranged for blood at the right time.”. She and her baby were given appropriate post natal care for 5 days and were also asked to come back for a follow up check up to ensure that Ashwini has a safe motherhood and her baby grows to have a healthy childhood. The ambulance services at SPARSH dropped her home safely.
In rural India, most women have home deliveries assisted by untrained midwives. This leads to high maternal mortality because the midwives are not equipped to deal with unexpected complications. In Osmanabad District,(a state in India, where our SPARSH hospital is located) , 38% of pregnant women undergo delivery at home by untrained midwives, and 57.5% of these women witness complications during delivery. Ashwini is just one story of the many fortunate ones to reach our hospital on time.
Each year the SPARSH hospital provides maternal and child care services to more than 8,100 rural women. The following are the special services the hospital provides pregnent mother and newborns.
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