Rosie Scribble

Help save 1000 mums' lives this Mother's Day

 
UNICEF ambassadors Ewan McGregor and Cat Deeley have launched UNICEF UK’s campaign to help save the lives of 1,000 Mums. They are calling on people across the UK to make a difference to the lives of 1,000 mums, by buying their mum a UNICEF ‘Deliver a Baby’ gift pack as their Mothers Day gift.

The aim is to sell 1,000 life-saving packs by Sunday, to highlight the number of women who will die on that day, and everyday, due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth.

Although great progress has been made in reducing maternal mortality, childbirth  remains one of the leading causes of death amongst women in the developing world. Due to a lack of access to basic medical care and support, often stemming from poverty, nearly 1,000 mums die each and everyday as a result of pregnancy related complications.

I am one of the bloggers involved in this campaign. To help publicise these figures, we are focusing on six of the countries around the world with the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. I am looking at Afghanistan.

Spotlight on Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a landlocked and mountainous country in south-central Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east and Iran in the west. Since the late 1970s, Afghanistan has experienced a continuous state of war. The country is currently being rebuilt slowly with support from the international community while dealing with the Taliban insurgency and political problems.

It has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world, with 1 in every 11 women at risk of dying during pregnancy or child birth.

Limited access to health facilities has been a major obstacle for women in the region and the cost of public transportation, the risks of travelling while pregnant and the prevailing security situation all discourage women from seeking proper prenatal care, leaving them extremely vulnerable if they develop complications during their pregnancy or birth. 

We can help save lives

We can help save lives by buying a UNICEF inspired 'Deliver a Baby' pack. Priced at £23, each pack contains all the equipment necessary for the safe delivery of one baby, including medicines and delivery, sterilisation and resuscitation equipment.

Each UNICEF Inspired Gift purchase comes complete with an exclusive Gift Card, which can be personalised and delivered to your choice of UK postal address. Your 'Deliver a Baby' pack will be delivered directly to a vulnerable mother and her baby across the world. 

Please buy one today by visiting the UNICEF shop.

We can help save lives this Mother’s Day.

This is not a sponsored post. I am a supporter of  UNICEF.

Lend your social media status to an African mother

When AMREF – Africa’s leading health development charity - offered to send me a sample birthing kit to show the bare minimum needed to deliver a baby safety, I had imagined a rather large parcel arriving on my doorstep. In fact it turned out to be, literally, a matchbox.

The matchbox contained a piece of plastic sheeting to lay on the floor, a tiny bar of soap and cotton wool for hygiene, a piece of string to tie the umbilical cord, and a razor blade with some matches to sterilise it.

That is the bare minimum needed to deliver a baby safely. Equipped with these, the birth attendants in Africa, trained by AMREF, is the key to saving a mother’s life and that of her child.

The issue of childbirth and maternal well-being in the developing world is a focus for many charities this Mother’s Day. AMREF are keen to raise awareness of the difficulties many women face in poorest communities of Africa. Every year 280,000 mothers die unnecessarily in pregnancy and childbirth because they lack basic medical care. AMREF is working to ensure no woman dies while giving life.

AMREF, together with the creative agency BBH, has created a simple way to raise awareness and even help save lives – the ‘Status of Africa: Mother’s Day’ campaign. Their application allows users to choose a real African mother or midwife AMREF works with, to share their Facebook status or Twitter account with for 5 days. The app then automatically updates their status twice a day with their chosen African mother or midwife.

The voices of these women – at the heart of their communities - is rarely heard. By lending your social media status you can provide them with a mouthpiece to tell people what it’s really like to be a mother in Africa.

AMREF is asking people to donate their Facebook status, profile picture or Twitter stream to AMREF for Mother’s Day, 3rd April 2011. You can also raise awareness by tweeting about the campaign and including the hashtag #StatusofAfrica, to support AMREF’s aim to train more midwives in Africa who will ultimately save many lives.

You can donate your status by following the instructions on their Facebook landing page. Simply visit: http://apps.facebook.com/statusofafrica/

Tetanus and the work that still needs to be done

I travelled to Cameroon with the Pampers and UNICEF team to see the success of their partnership in helping to eliminate maternal and newborn tetanus and to see for myself the work that still needs to be done. During our time in Ngamboula we met two women and their families who had not been vaccinated against tetanus because they believed the injections would harm them in some way. As a result, they all remained at risk of contracting the disease.

Between them Madame Pelagie and Madame Yvonne had had 17 pregnancies. Fourteen of their children were still alive. Madame Pelagie, the younger of the two women, was holding her seven month-old twins when we spoke to her outside her mud hut. She did not know her age but her husband said he was 23. She looked little older. Her eldest child was ten years old. It seems that when girls start having their periods here, they start having children. Many of the pregnant women we had seen in the village looked very young.

 

Madame Pelagie had received no vaccinations and had never visited a hospital, nor had any of her seven children. As she had her first five children at home alone in unhygienic surroundings, the risk of them contracting tetanus would have been very high. She explained that once her babies were born she would leave them on the floor and go and get help from a relative who would cut the umbilical cord with bamboo. She received some help from the village’s traditional birth attendant for the birth of her twins but still went through a high-risk birth with no professional support on hand.

Tetanus is caused by bacteria that lives in dead and decaying matter in soil, animal dung and faeces and develops when bacteria contaminates an open wound. The bacteria works as a nerve toxin (poison), affecting the central nervous system and causing painful and uncontrollable muscle spasms. Anyone can contract maternal and newborn tetanus if they are not vaccinated; however, it is usually women and newborns living in remote areas with no access to antenatal care or immunisation that become affected.

All Madame Pelagie’s children will have been put at risk of contracting the disease and remain at risk while they remain unvaccinated. She explained to us that she was scared of needles and worried that the needle would break and end up in the body.

Madame Yvonne, aged 42, was convinced that vaccinations would make her children ill. Her children were aged between seven weeks and 22 years. None of them had been vaccinated and, in fact, she had little understanding of what tetanus was or why vaccination was important. While her husband had some understanding, he was also unaware of the risks of remaining unvaccinated.

Again, Madame Yvonne had had all her babies at home alone, apart from the time she had given birth in the bush. She had been working on a nearby farm when her contractions started and there was no time to find shelter. The risk of herself or her newborn baby contracting tetanus would have been extremely high. One of her children had received a vaccination in the past but Madame Yvonne explained that it had given him a fever for two days so she had decided against any further vaccines for any of her children.

A crucial part of the MNT elimination campaign in Cameroon involves educating women, like Madame Pelagie and Madame Yvonne, about tetanus, the importance of being vaccinated and dispelling any inaccurate beliefs they may have. It was obvious from our visit that further work still needs to be done in this area. Fathers, too, needed to appreciate the importance of their wives and children being vaccinated.

As I watched many children during my time in Cameroon playing happily in the soil, it was worrying to know that there will be many who remain at risk from the bacteria that lives there. A simple course of vaccines could eliminate that risk and give them a much brighter future.

Maternal and newborn tetanus (MNT) still threatens the lives of 170 million women and their newborn babies in 40 countries around the world. In 2010 (according to WHO), it has been calculated that approximately 59,000 newborns die annually from newborn tetanus, and thousands of women from maternal tetanus. Even though MNT is easily preventable with a simple vaccine, one baby till dies needlessly of newborn tetanus every nine minutes.

Together we can change that.

Pampers and UNICEF

Facing the reality of tetanus in the developing world

Tetanus is not something I had given a great deal of thought to before my field trip to Cameroon. The last recorded case in the UK was over 80 years ago and children are now routinely vaccinated against the disease. Yet in Africa, and many parts of the developing world, maternal and newborn tetanus is still a reality.

From Lembe village we made the twenty minute drive to Akussa village, home to Madame Ngans Sophie and Mr Nkodo Tongo Isodore. They were the grandparents of the baby treated for newborn tetanus by the District Medical Officer we had spoken to that morning. He died in 2008, aged just three weeks, before there was even a chance to give him a name.

Despite the heat and their obvious poverty, Mr Isodore had dressed for our visit in a suit and tie and immaculately polished shoes. It was moving to see the effort he had gone to on our behalf and the importance he clearly placed on our visit. As his wife sat quietly in the corner of their very basic home, Mr Isodore told us the story of his grandson, born to one of his daughters, Madame Christelle when she was just 14.

His daughters had been told that any new boyfriend must be introduced to the family so they could get to know him. However his fourteen-year-old had not done this, and on discovering she was pregnant had fled the family home, concealing the pregnancy from her parents.

She returned home months later, unsure of exactly how many months pregnant she was. The father of her unborn child was told to take responsibility for her, but instead he disappeared and was never seen again.

During that time the girl received her first tetanus vaccine. However, the outreach motorbike delivering the second crucial vaccine broke down. So when she gave birth to a baby boy at home shortly afterwards, she was not fully protected against the disease. Her mother cut the umbilical cord using a razor blade dipped in alcohol to sterilise it and tied the cord with thread used to plait hair that had been bought from the local market. The thread was not clean.

For three days the consequences of the unclean thread were not obvious, but then the baby became stiff, changed colour and refused to breastfeed – all classic signs of newborn tetanus. The girl’s father borrowed money and took them both to the local health centre where they were sent home with medicines to inject.

By the evening the baby’s condition had deteriorated. Mother and baby both went to the district hospital where they remained for seven days. After that time, and showing no signs of improvement, they were sent home. The baby boy died the same day.

Tetanus is known as the silent killer. It is still a reality in the developing world. Pampers and UNICEF have been working in partnership since 2006 to help work towards eliminating the disease and raise money for tetanus vaccines to protect the millions of women who are still at risk from the disease. It is a goal which can be achieved in our lifetime, with our help. For every pack of Pampers products purchased with the “1 pack = 1 life-saving vaccine” logo, Pampers will donate the cost of one tetanus vaccine to UNICEF.

Preventing unnecessary deaths, like this one, really is as simple as that.

Where risky home births are the only option

From the district hospital in Bertoua, I travelled with the Pampers and UNICEF team to Lembe village a short distance away and home to 240 villagers, the majority of whom were children.

It was a village I found to be particularly desolate and bleak and many of the children looked quite despondent. Yet many of the villagers came out to greet us and sang an upbeat song about UNICEF and tetanus. Alex, one of our UNICEF representatives from the UK, was presented with a bouquet of flowers.

The fact that we were made so welcome in Lembe village, and in all the villages we visited during our time in Cameroon, was due to the very strong links UNICEF has established with these communities. As a result the villagers were happy to welcome us into their homes and talk openly to us about their lives.

The first person we interviewed was Mr Desire Andono, a community mobiliser. Without television or other forms of mass media, the villagers relied on mobilisers like Mr Desire to educate or ‘sensitise’ them about health issues such as tetanus. An important part of any mass maternal and newborn tetanus elimination campaign is explaining to women the importance of being vaccinated as well as providing practical information about where they can receive their tetanus vaccines.

Mr Desire spoke with great enthusiasm about his presenting role at the local radio station and his weekly programme ‘Let’s talk about health.’ He was very keen to own a dictaphone so he could record locals for his show. As he explained this I was suddenly very aware of the dictaphone I had in my hand, something I had picked off the shelf shortly before the trip on the off-chance I might need it. I had given little consideration to the cost. How different the situation is in Cameroon. For Mr Desire it would cost him two months’ wages, yet he had a far greater need for it than me.

We then met Madame Meling Jacqueline, aged 20, who was nine months pregnant and due to give birth any day. As she spoke to us in her home about her wish to give birth in the district hospital, where conditions had shocked me that morning, I wondered what sort of birth lay ahead for her and whether she and her child would survive. She was waiting to receive the US$6 she needed to give birth in hospital from her sister. If the money did not arrive, she would have no option but to give birth at home with the assistance of a Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA). TBAs have experience of delivering babies but very basic training, if any at all, and limited resources.

When we were introduced to the village TBA, Madame Biwole Biscotine, later that afternoon, I was shocked to see that her ‘delivery kit’ consisted of just a plastic apron and a plastic mat. Women gave birth in her kitchen and were required to bring their own kit, including gloves. If they were not able to bring their own gloves then she would deliver the baby with her bare hands.

Despite her limited training, Madame Biscotine did have a comprehensive understanding of maternal and newborn tetanus. She understood that it could be contracted during childbirth as a result of unhygienic birthing practices, such as cutting the umbilical cord with unsterile instruments or treating it with contaminated dressings, and also how it could be prevented with vaccinations and hygienic birthing practices.

So despite the remote locations, the lack of education, and the poverty, the message about tetanus was getting through to these communities. The maternal and newborn tetanus elimination campaign in Cameroon, that money from Pampers and UNICEF was helping to fund, was proving successful and I left the village feeling a little more hopeful for the generations of villagers and their children living there.