Four years...and memories to last a lifetime

Four years seems like a long time in retrospect, but fifteen hours feel even longer as I restlessly sit on a flight from Dhaka, Bangladesh to Los Angeles.  This will be my last trip overseas with VSI, as I prepare to leave the organization to pursue my PhD.  This last long flight allows me plenty of time to reflect on these past few years and the impact of this work on women’s health.

I first joined VSI four years ago when the organization was a much smaller operation and only had a few country programs.  I am honored to have had the opportunity to help build and support many of VSI’s misoprostol programs from the ground up.  Ghana and Bangladesh were such programs.

The first half of this last trip I spent in Ghana, visiting rural health centers where misoprostol tablets are distributed to women during antenatal care (ANC).  The counseling and misoprostol women are receiving while pregnant ensure they will have protection against excessive bleeding if they cannot make it to a health facility in time to deliver. In Bangladesh I traveled with partners and visited similar safe motherhood programs in rural communities.

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Dario's Grandmother

His mother, Felismina, was hanging the laundry and busy tending to her two elder children. Fresh from his bath and wide awake, the three-month-old’s cooing gradually grew in pitch and volume. I was acutely aware of the microphone capturing the words of four traditional birth attendants steps away from the fussing baby alone on the ground. I smiled at Felismina, gave her a look of understanding, and with a show of hands indicated my willingness to help (…to hold! how quickly my own babes had grown!)

Baby Dario is a chubby baby with serious brown eyes and soft skin. A “miso baby” as we at VSI affectionately call them, babies born to mothers who take misoprostol tablets to prevent life-threatening bleeding—bleeding that all too often renders babies like Dario motherless. Baby Dario is the third child born to Felismina. His world is one of simplicity. He has one brightly colored blanket, a bucket in which he is bathed, a mother’s smile and milk for sustenance. His siblings play with a stick and a wiry wheel on the dirt ground. He came into the world at home, a dark dirt-floored hut, caught by his maternal grandmother Maria’s hands. Maria, a parteira tradicional, was being interviewed in the shade of a tree as I rocked him on the side-lines.

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Midwives...they help people out*

Life can be ironic.  My work at VSI centers on mediating the dangers of home births, however two years ago, I chose to deliver my second baby, Levi, at home in California.  With access to hospitals and highly skilled medical care, choosing to deliver my child with a midwife at home is a bit of an anomaly.  For women in rural communities throughout Africa and Asia, delivering at home is often the norm and sadly, too often fatal.

Despite a perfectly lovely experience at a hospital in Berkeley delivering my first son where I received remarkable care, when I became pregnant with my second son I couldn’t help but feel drawn to the idea of homebirth with a midwife.  Dawn and Sue – my supportive and skilled midwives, plus Davey, their assistant, were an amazing team.  And contrary to popular imagination they did not simply waltz into my home with arms swinging to declare they were there to catch the baby.

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2011 and Beyond...

The month of January is a special time. It marks the beginning of the year, renewal as we resolve to do better, and a glimpse at the twelve upcoming months. At VSI we are rolling into our 2011 programs full speed ahead, with a renewed commitment to our mission to improve women’s health. At the end of 2010 we had programs in 14 countries throughout Asia and Africa. 2011 will bring us to more countries, with new programs and greater opportunities to improve women’s health. But there is one particular country where we will deepen our commitment and reach this year.

As the second most populous country in Africa with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, Ethiopia has been an important place for us to focus our efforts. 94% of women deliver at home in rural Ethiopia, a statistic that continues to astound me each time I hear it. One of our most ambitious programs trains village-level Health Extension Workers (HEWs) on the provision of misoprostol to women in order to curb bleeding-related maternal deaths.

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"Save the Moms"

As hundreds of doctors convened in Islamabad to learn about misoprostol, a life-saving drug in women’s health, one doctor’s daughter, 10-year-old Gullalai, gravitated toward the drug’s package and fixated on the name, “S. T. Mom" (Saves the Mom). The name inspired her right then and there to write a poem about saving moms, and before the day’s program was completed, Gullalai was at the podium reading her poem to a room full of physicians. 

SAVE THE MOMS......

Our Moms are everything for us,

We should not tease them,

 

We should cook with them,

We should wash clothes with them,

When our Moms get injured,

And they fall down and bleed,

 

Then we should give them good drugs,

PLEASE PEOPLE, LET US SAVE OUR MOMS!!!!!

GULLALAI,
5th GRADE

Gullalai found herself at Pakistan’s largest ever medical conference on misoprostol, hosted by Greenstar and VSI, because she attends many of her mother’s work-related events.

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