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Midwifery in Uganda

Just after I published the report from Marg Docking (above) I received this email from Jill Moloney, an Australian midwife who does a lot of volunteer midwifery in developing countries. After spending time in Cambodia, she was in North Korea for some time, where she was able to bring about many changes for midwives and birthing women. I have written up her stories several times.

Now Jill writes to me from Uganda. This is what she has to say:

G'day Andrea,

I hope all is well with you?

I read with great interest about Marg Docking coming to Uganda in December. I've been here with an Irish NGO called 'GOAL' since the start of August this year. I am working with Josephine, a local midwife, to provide refresher training to 200 TBAs in Agago County (a county of Pader District in Northern Uganda - still technically a conflict zone, but we are safe here).

I discovered when I got here that midwifery students are taught only to attend births with the woman lying down and so have been working on that intensively with Josephine to 're-programme' her and she is now taking my pelvis with her and demonstrating to people the wonders of the mobile pelvis (lessons taken from your book where the TBAs and health unit midwives she works with are asked to feel what happens to their own pelvis when they move into different positions). She also read the information about the hormone interactions with great interest and is taking that on board, advocating that women be offered a comfortable environment in which to labour and birth.

We have requested funding to renovate a maternity section of one health unit as a pilot project. We are proposing to make it as close as possible to the birthing unit featured in 'Giving Birth: Being Born' as we can (obviously we can't make it quite the same as we don't have the same materials, but we aim to do as much as possible). The building we are to renovate has no bathroom or toilet and so we'll incorporate a bathing shelter of some sort.

Malnutrition is also a big problem in the area and so we will work with the food security staff of GOAL to plant a 'nutrition garden' so that the midwife can use real examples when she is providing nutrition education - currently it is quite barren around the building, except for a lovely big mango tree. If all goes well, we'll continue to renovate birthing rooms in other health units as part of an up-coming project which should begin around June next year.

I have also been making friends at the midwifery school, which is located in an Italian mission hospital. It has a very good reputation, attracting local, national and international students from the region. As it is a mission, the nuns and tutors run the school on a very low budget and their teaching aids and library are out of date. I had a meeting with them last week and offered to make a request for training aids and books in the same proposal as that for the maternity unit renovation. They were excited, and we went through a number of items from the Birth International site. The Sister in Charge was thrilled with the suggestions I gave her and can't wait for the day the items arrive! (I have cautioned her that this will take some time as we don't even have approval yet).

We went through the Essential Educator pack and all the staff agreed that it was just what they needed to help them to re-vamp their curriculum. I was surprised that one of the best parts of the pack for them was the CD of babies crying - they said they discuss this issue, but it's a very dry lesson and they imagine they can do so much more with this CD. They thought the fetal dolls were very attractive also - and requested me to order both black and white dolls. I hope we hear soon about the success of the proposal as I can't wait to get ordering for them.

During this same visit the Sister in Charge was lamenting that they know they should be teaching students to attend births with the women upright, but they haven't had any education in this topic themselves, and no experience. And so I'm going to work with them for a couple of days, doing a similar education as I provided for the health staff in North Korea. They say they are really looking forward to it and so am I (as I get a kick out of doing this NGO work, but love it best when I'm facilitating childbirth education).

I would love to make contact with Marg Docking before and/or during her visit to Uganda. If she's venturing to the North, maybe we'll be able to meet... Do you know of any other midwives/childbirth educators in Uganda at the moment?

Cheers,

Jill

It is very uplifting to hear how midwifery ideas are being spread through the world by people like Jill. We will certainly see what we can do to help her cause, through donations.

I wonder where she will write from next time?

Posted by andrea at November 22, 2006 09:05 AM