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| Sign on the wall at a health center in Mayuge District |
Hello from Uganda! I am here again in the warm sunshine just narrowly missing the start of the
cold rain in Seattle. Sometimes trip
timing has its benefits. I am in Uganda for
the next 7 days on the way to the International Conference of Family Planning
happening in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia next week.
Believe it or not, it was
more
cost effective for me to come to Uganda first than to go straight from Seattle to Addis. Fine by me, there is plenty of work to do
here in Uganda.
As you may know from my previous posts, PATH is responsible
for the introduction and evaluation of Sayana Press (
http://sites.path.org/rh/recent-reproductive-health-projects/sayanapress/)
in the four countries of Senegal, Uganda, Burkina Faso and Niger. The product is intended to be delivered to woman by lower level
community health workers to inject. Theoretically, this could help women access family planning in their communities rather than having to travel to a health facility and see a trained medical professional
for their family planning injection.
So, you may be asking yourself at this point, why does that
matter? This photo may help to
illustrate.
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| New mother to triplets at a heath center in Mayuge |
We met this woman yesterday at a maternity ward at a health center
III in Mayuge District. Two days prior she had given birth to triplets, which
were her 7
th, 8
th and 9
th child at the age of
32. The story was rather
remarkable. She is from rural Uganda and never had a prenatal appointment during this pregnancy. When she went into labor she went to her TBA
(traditional birth attendant) in her community to give birth. She thought she was only having one child. After hours in labor, the woman was weak and in trouble, and the baby was breached. The TBA recommended she go to the health center, but they had no money
for her to get there. So, while she was struggling
through this difficult labor the family begged from the kindness of strangers to help her get to the health center. Luckily, help
came through and she was transported to the maternity ward of this health center. After the first baby was delivered, her stomach was still very large and they realize another one (or two!) were still in there. The midwife at the health facility said, “She
is lucky she made it there and there were plenty of us around to help” deliver her babies. She only
brought one dress to change into and has no money for clothes for the children. She was accompanied by her husband in the
maternity ward, where they are trying to keep her and the babies there for
another couple of days because they are so small and as the midwife stated, “They
only have a dirt floor and it is not safe for the babies with sensitive immune
systems.” It goes without saying we
offered money to help with the babies and their basic needs.
The gravity of a mother with nine children at the age of 32
weighs heavily on me. This is not
uncommon in rural Uganda, where access to family planning services is
limited. I hope that Sayana Press can
help make a difference in hard to reach areas and gives some women more choice
and control over their reproductive health.
