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Midwifery in East Timor

Margaret Aggar is a midwife from the Central Coast in NSW (just north of Sydney). About two years ago she visited East Timor and discovered their enormous need for midwifery training and assistance, supplies, equipment and know how.

East Timor, as many of you will know, is a former province of Indonesia that achieved independence a few years ago, following a long struggle with separatist and rebel forces. The UN stepped in, achieved peace and then organised democratic elections where the people voted to established their own independent State. As East Timor is only a couple of hours flying time from Darwin, Australia played a large role in the peacekeeping forces and has continued to support the struggling country to get on its feet and this process continues.

Margaret decided to organise another visit to Dili (the capital city) and this time to take some supplies with her. The purpose of the trip was to train the local midwives and to give them some basic equipment to help them carry out their work. She has been there about 4 weeks now, and has been sending back regular accounts of her adventures, with many photos of the local midwives, women and general scene.

Over the past few days hostilities have again broken out, with gangs of armed youths rampaging through the city, attacking the armed forces, looting and burning houses and public buildings. Once again the UN has been called in and Australian troops are again on the ground, restoring order and disarming the gangs. Many foreigners have been evacuated to Darwin along with a number of refugees. Margaret is still there, and reports that she is safe and well protected. She is going about her midwifery as usual, supporting the women who visit the clinic and also many of the staff, whose homes have been vandalised or burned.

It took quite some time for all the supplies that Margaret had organised to be cleared through customs. The red tape was extensive and in the end they “liberated” the goods themselves from the containers at the airport. The birth packs are now being put to good use as part of the training program that Margaret has begun.

One of the midwives was herself pregnant with twins and worked right up until going into labour herself at the clinic, where she had assisted at a birth only hours before. Her babies arrived very safely and are doing very well.

Some months ago Margaret had approached Birth International for some help with this project. We receive many requests of this kind and try to do what we can. In this case we were able to donate dolls and a pelvis and Margaret has been using them to teach the midwives how to manage a shoulder dystocia (amongst other topics).

I’ll include some photos of her work for you. Hats off to Margaret for her huge voluntary effort and her dedication and commitment to the women of East Timor. It shows what a difference one person can make, when they set their minds to a project.

“Liberating” the 12 cartons of materials.

Unpacking some of the boxes at the Clinic.

Margaret with the twins, born to her midwifery colleague Marcelina, at the Clinic.

An educational session using the donated Birth International models.

Posted by andrea at May 29, 2006 05:36 PM