{"id":270472,"date":"2010-02-03T06:30:32","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T11:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxfam.org.uk\/applications\/blogs\/pressoffice\/?p=10376"},"modified":"2010-02-03T06:30:32","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T11:30:32","slug":"mumsnet-maternal-health-in-rural-malawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/270472","title":{"rendered":"Mumsnet: Maternal health in rural Malawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following earlier collaboration with us to highlight the massive problem of <\/em>maternal mortality<\/em><\/a> in the developing world, Carrie Longton, founder of hit parenting website <\/em>Mumsnet<\/em><\/a>, is on a factfinding trip with Oxfam in Malawi. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\"A<\/a><\/p>\n
A bike ambulance used to carry people to hospital. Credit: Oxfam<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

We\u2019ve now had two full, very full, days in Malawi visiting pregnant women, mission hospitals, community projects, meeting all sorts of people in our quest for information on maternal health. On Thursday we\u2019re meeting with Malawian government officials, please leave questions for us to ask them in the comments section at the bottom.<\/p>\n

Day one<\/strong> was meeting local women (both pregnant and those who\u2019d given birth recently) in a rural village about an hour outside Blantyre town. It felt strangely normal to be sitting with a breastfeeding, pregnant woman on a straw mat outside a very basic mud hut talking about the difficulties of making it to hospital when pregnant.<\/p>\n

The sort of conversation that regularly takes place on Mumsnet<\/a>, with any mum to be (especially one with 3 children already). The harsh and very real difference being that in Malawi there was a 1 in 100 chance that the mother wouldn\u2019t make it through childbirth.<\/p>\n

Sitting in the sunshine in this peaceful, friendly village full of beautiful children with this didn\u2019t seem to be a concern. They were happy with the monthly antenatal check ups they get in the village and pleased with the free healthcare they received at hospital. Getting to hospital was an issue (and the only main cost), but they seemed confident that when the time came, they would make it in a local public taxi, though we couldn’t quite get out of anyone how on earth you got a public taxi if you went into labour in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

The village was a good 2 km away from the main road down a dirt track with no lights. It certainly put all my moaning about being driven through London in labour into perspective. Or so I thought.<\/p>\n

Day two\u2019s<\/strong> visit to an even more remote rural community, added yet another layer of perspective. Meeting with community project volunteers we heard how difficult it is to access an ambulance in an emergency.<\/p>\n

Mobile phone coverage was unreliable and families would sometimes cycle to the nearest hospital with a letter requesting an ambulance – the cycle ride was uphill on a road that made yesterday\u2019s dirt track look like the M1. The alternative, when it didn\u2019t have a puncture, was the bicycle ambulance – a stretcher on two wheels pulled behind a very basic bike, with no seat belt. Although it took us about 20 minutes by jeep, the journey to hospital was a three hour bike ride. The last person to use the contraption had died on their way to the hospital.<\/p>\n

After all the good news stories of yesterday, this was a horrific and sobering thought.<\/p>\n

Chatting to the students and staff at our next stop – a hospital with a nursing\/midwife training college attached – was both inspiring and depressing. One trainee had witnessed two maternal deaths, one of them in the hospital closest to the last village we\u2019d visited, both caused by getting to the hospital too late.<\/p>\n

Another student had been a beneficiary of the education for girls project, which offered free secondary school to girls, but which has now been abandoned. All had benefited from a scheme to offer free places at nurse\/midwifery school, in exchange for a minimum of 5 years service in state health care. Enthusiastic and committed to helping rural communities, these soon to be midwives are, from my brief experience here, exactly what Malawi needs.<\/p>\n

Sadly this scheme ended last year, and this year\u2019s intake will have to pay their own way – around 130 UK pounds – a fortune in Malawian terms. None of the original candidates for the course had managed to raise the funds. Those that had finally taken their places were, in the words of both staff and students, never going to practice in rural areas :\u2018any Malawian could tell you that just by looking at them\u2019.<\/p>\n

We drove back to the hotel through driving rain, having promised to add their cause to the lengthening list of questions we have prepared for our meetings with DFID and vice president Joyce Banda later in the week. We, and the women of Malawi, can only hope that they have some answers.<\/p>\n

Oxfam’s Health and Education For All campaign<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following earlier collaboration with us to highlight the massive problem of maternal mortality in the developing world, Carrie Longton, founder of hit parenting website Mumsnet, is on a factfinding trip with Oxfam in Malawi. A bike ambulance used to carry people to hospital. Credit: Oxfam We\u2019ve now had two full, very full, days in Malawi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}