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Teaching aids for Muslim women

Today I met an Australian midwife who works in the United Arab Emirates, in a small rural centre outside Abu Dhabi. She has been there for five years with her family and has plans to stay for another five to ten years. She loves her work as a midwife, working mainly with prenatal education and postnatal breastfeeding support. Her hospital is the only BFHI accredited hospital in the UAE and she is working towards the reaccreditation by the WHO that is coming up soon

She was looking for suitable DVDs and teaching aids for women with no English and fairly low levels of literacy in their own language. These materials also needed to be culturally acceptable in this Islamic country.

The breastfeeding topic was covered by the “Teaching Breastfeeding” pack which is one of the Essential Educator kit elements. The breast model and DVD that forms part of this pack she felt would fill the bill very well.

Finding a birth DVD was not so easy as most of our range are either water births or show a lot of nudity. In the end she took “What If….” which is short, doesn’t show the perineum during the birth and takes place in a hospital. We added “Hands Off Birth” as this is perfect to show in a country where episiotomy is almost routine and where changing beliefs that the perineum doesn’t stretch during birth can be a tough call. This DVD was made as part of the HOOP trial which proved that keeping one’s hands off the perineum does not mean more tears for women – it’s a very useful film. She also took “Giving Birth, Being Born” as the first half of this film has no spoken words just music to accompany the scenes of women giving birth in a hospital clinic. Again, there are no close up perineal views and the women are all clothed - important for this clientele.

It was fascinating to learn of her work in the UAE and of her happy lifestyle there. I hope she will visit again when she is next back home.

Posted by andrea at October 09, 2007 05:46 PM