Women's Health and Midwives

A few weeks ago we had the annual Midwife workshop focused on Obstetric Emergencies. As a new member of the Women's Health and Midwife Team I was able to be apart of planning and facilitating the workshop along with representatives from the Ministry of Health, Catholic Relief Services and 3 other PCVs. In order to understand the reason for this workshop, you have to know a little bit about midwives here. There is not midwifery certification and education here like in the states; they are simply women who care very much about their communities, are well-respected within them, and have alot of experience with births (often their own). There has been a big push throughout the country to increase the number of women who give birth in hospitals, this has (to an extent) alienated the midwife community and made them feel unwelcome within the health system. They work very hard within their communities and want to be respected. Of course, the other side of this is that the health professionals are simply pushing institutional care because it is safer and there is immediate access to emergency care should there be any complications during a birth. Both groups just want the best for their communities.
The workshop we helped organize was an opportunity to bring people from different sides of this issue together to work towards the common goal of improving care for pregnant women. Participants in the workshop were community teams made up of a Peace Corps Volunteer, a midwife and an institutional health worker (ie. doctors, nurses..). During the workshop we discussed ways that people can work together within their communities to improve health outcomes, and also trained everyone on specific skills designed to decrease the number of maternal deaths. We talked about proper handwashing, sterilization of equipment, pregnancy risk factors, and warning signs of problems during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. The number one cause of death in pregnant women here is hemorrhage, so we talked alot about calculating blood loss during the birth, and immediately post-partum, and the technique of bimanual compression. Midwives can use this technique in their communities in the event of an emergency, it will buy time which can be used to transport the patient to a hospital. The hope of this workshop is that the teams will return to their communties with new information, and (in a classic training of trainers style ) teach the information to other midwives in the area. People seemed to really enjoy the workshop, and I have high hopes for implementing more training programs within the Gracias area with the two women from here who came to the workshop. It was alot of fun for me to be a part of the workshop and I'm excited to continue work with this team.

So there you go; another update on what I'm doing here in the land of mountains and mangos :) Stay tuned for more updates :)
I still miss everyone from home... please keep emailing and writing, I love to hear from people!