When we first moved to Adaklu, we did a survey of 15 villages to find out what the women needed the most.
We found out that 85% of births were happening in the villages, attended by traditional midwives. Most of the midwives had no training at all.
A few had been taught by their mothers or aunts who were midwives before them and some had been through a one week government course.
Almost every woman had lost at least one child between newborn and the age of five.
We developed a vision for saving the lives of women and children. We do this by
- Training traditional midwives
- Providing prenatal care
- Making sure that high risk cases are sent to the hospital
- Paying hospital bills for emergency cases, especially those involving children
So far, we have built one maternity clinic and trained 6 midwives.
These midwives have attended many births and truly saved the lives of women and babies.
We have paid hospital bills for some older children, who may have died without medical attention.
In the future, we plan to continue operating the clinic.
We plan to go into the more remote villages to give prenatal care and to send in mobile clinics.
We plan to train more midwives and to set up more clinics. In order to do this we need
- A vehicle that can get through the bush roads, even in the rainy season
- Funding for medications and other costs of running the clinic
- Volunteers to come and help with teaching and health care
