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We are delighted to welcome Andrew to the Maternity Worldwide team.  Based in Uganda, Andrew is our new Community Health Promotion Manager.  He will be building partnerships with local stakeholders and working with women’s groups in the community to provide maternal and newborn health information.

A note from Andrew:

“I enjoy working with MW because of its integrated approach to maternal and child health issues which focuses on community empowerment and service provision.  Meaning the approach of MW addresses both practical and empowerment needs of women and mothers in particular.

I see MW helping to unlock the potential in every woman, mothers in particular, through an integrated approach of empowerment and capacity building through women groups, income generation and service provision.

My task is to ensure that the vision of MW of a world in which all women and their babies are able to access safe and appropriate childbirth regardless of where they live is fulfilled through combined effort with other MW team members and stakeholders in the areas of implementation in Hoima.”

Bultu first visited our Maternity Worldwide maternal health clinic in Homa, Ethiopia two years ago when she was 34 weeks pregnant.

She lives a 2 hour walk away but made the difficult journey to the clinic to ensure everything was ok with her pregnancy as she had been told about the clinic by other women in her village. Staff at the clinic had been trained by Maternity Worldwide to identify which mothers face the highest risks when they deliver their babies.  As this was Bultu’s 5th pregnancy she was advised to give birth at the clinic as she was at higher risk of heavy bleeding following the birth (a major cause of death in mothers in developing countries).

Bultu returned to the clinic when she was 41 weeks pregnant but it was discovered her waters had broken the week before.  A trained nurse carried out an ultrasound and found there was no fluid around the baby.  Bultu was taken to the nearest hospital where an emergency caesarian was carried out as both Bultu’s and the baby’s life were at risk.  Thankfully Bultu gave birth to a healthy boy, Elsay, weighing 3.7kg.  After a stay in hospital to recover they were both allowed to go home.

Fast forward 2 years and on a recent visit to Ethiopia to carry out a needs assessment for an expansion of our programme work our Trustee, Mary Russell, and volunteer Katherine Lattey, visited Bultu and met her gorgeous 2 year old boy, Elsay.  Bultu is now part of a women’s group in her community and actively encourages all pregnant women in her village to attend the clinic in Homa for antenatal care and also when it is time for them to have their baby. Bultu was excited about a waiting home being built in Homa and said this was a great idea to help women to give birth safely.

You can read the full story about Bultu’s delivery here.

We are delighted to announce that our second Muffins for Midwives raised a whopping £7077 to train more midwives in Africa.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who hosted or attended an event and to those who made donations, without your incredible support we would not be able to train more midwives.

We had events taking place across the UK as well as Japan, Canada, Gibraltar and Australia!  The cake parties took place at work, at home, in village halls, at local parks and even in a martial arts centre!

Get involved

It’s not too late to get involved, events can be held all year round, if you would like a free fundraising pack with everything you need to host your event please click here.

Make a donation

If you would like to make a donation to our Muffins for Midwives appeal please visit our JustGiving page here.  It costs just £80 a month to train a midwife, just £15 could provide a midwifery textbook so anything you can spare will make a huge difference.

Maternity Worldwide are delighted to announce that we have been awarded a grant of £498,027 over 3 years from the Big Lottery Fund for our new integrated maternal health project in Malawi.  The lottery funding will be used solely for our work in Malawi over the next 3 years.

The project, starting in September, will work in 80 villages in the Zomba district of Malawi to improve maternal and newborn healthcare.  You will be able to read updates on the progress of the project on our Malawi page.  Please find details of the project below.

What the programme will be focusing on:

Women’s groups

The programme, which is due to begin in September 2014, will work with existing women’s groups and set-up new women’s groups to provide community maternal health promotion. All community members from the 80 villages will be invited to attend as it is important all members of the community are aware of the risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth.

The groups will be run by local volunteers who will have been trained to provide support and guidance to help women to identify there maternal and newborn health challenges. Topics covered during these sessions will include accessing antenatal care, family planning, HIV testing, trigger signs in pregnancy/child birth, planning for delivery, care for newborns, contraception and basic healthcare.

Income generation

Training around managing money and marketing will be provided at the women’s groups, and 1,500 of the poorest women will receive loans for income generating activities. This will empower the women by enabling them to become financially independent and make their own decisions about how to spend the money they have earned. Men will continue to have an important role in household decision making and as leaders within the community, and their inputs will be encouraged at community meetings and other related activities such as health promotion.

Training staff

Training will be provided which will equip staff with the knowledge and skills to provide the basic and comprehensive obstetric care at two health centres and Pirimiti community hospital respectively ensuring women who arrive at the health facilities to give birth are met by suitably skilled medical personnel.

A Midwife Trainer will lead and supervise a group of 24 staff to become Skilled Birth Attendants (SBA). Referral and management procedures will be improved in and between the facilities to ensure that women receive timely and appropriate care.

The project will also develop a complementary training programme to increase the knowledge of government Health Surveillance Assistants (HSA), which will enable them to advise families and communities on best practices during pregnancy and childbirth during their routine household visits and other community outreach activities. 69 HSA will be trained including seven newly recruited funded by the project to ensure adequate household coverage.

Meet Robert, our newest student midwife in Malawi whose training is being sponsored by Maternity Worldwide.

Having a midwife present at birth is one of the most effective ways to help to prevent women dying during childbirth.  Robert’s entire 3 year course to become a midwife is being paid for by the money raised last year from the Muffins for Midwives campaign where people held cake parties raising money to sponsor the training of more midwives.

Robert is from the Zomba region of Malawi and returned home for Easter where he gave this update to Grace, our trustee based in Malawi:

“My name is Robert, I was born in the year 1988, in a family of four children.  I come from zomba district – Malawi.

I finished my secondary education in the year 2009, but because of the shortage of universities in Malawi, and lack of funds to pay for private institutions I failed to go for tertiary education but I still had the desire to achieve my goals.

I started work at Pirimiti Community Hospital as Records Assistant where I reported to the Director of the hospital and Mrs. G. Makonyola, trustee of Maternity Worldwide, who encouraged me to achieve my goal and linked me to this organisation, that is why am here today singing this song.

Having succeeded at the interviews at Trinity Collage of Nursing and Midwifery in Nsanje district, I indeed proved that these people really are concerned with my future as Maternity Worldwide started funding the school fess for me to become a midwife.

I thank Maternity Worldwide on the great thing you are doing, I am a student whom you are funding for nursing and midwifery course in Malawi, I really appreciate your duty.  Having been briefed on some of the ways on how you get the aid to pay for my training, I really appreciate it and may God continue blessing you.”

If you would like to host a Muffins for Midwives event to help raise money to train people like Robert to become midwives please click here for more information.

Update from Robert – May 2014

“School and Examination Procedures

We started school on 6^th January 2014; we are 41 in total in our class and learning seven courses for the first semester.  I like the course and am enjoying the environment though it is the hottest environment in Malawi, but I easily adapted to it because I want to achieve my goal.  I also want to thank two mothers I met at Pirimiti Hospital because they encouraged me to follow the right professional that helps to save lives of people.

The examination procedures are that we write continuous assessment that contributes 40% of the last exam.  We have already written this exam and the following are the grades I have scored; Basic sciences 84%, Fundamentals of nursing 74%, Communicable and neglected diseases 76%, Communication in nursing 88%, Principals and practices of nursing 80, Community health nursing 56% and Surgical and trauma nursing, (not yet results).

I am trying to work hard so that I will eliminate the poor grades made.  At Easter holiday I went to Pirimiti and and met with, Dr. Zahara and Mrs. G. Makonyola, we had a good day that day.

My normal day

I wake up at 4:00 AM, have a prayer and then take a shower, prepare myself for the day classes.  I leave for studies up to 7:00 when we have breakfast and then 7:30 classes to 10:00 for tea break, 10:30 – 12:00 another class, and then 2 hours for lunch.  From 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM for another class, we also break up to 4:15 then last class up to 5:00 PM.  We go for super for about one hour, after that have my studies up to 10:30 then go to the hostel and have some minutes for reading then, I sleep.

Challenges

Most of the assignment given, they just say go and check which needs more sources of information and most of the resources in our library are old, computer lab is having only 6 computers which are functioning against about 200 students in total of all classes, so my first challenge is a computer.  If I can have a personal computer I can minimize some of the failures.  That is my priority challenge, other challenges like stationary I can at least manage, otherwise everything is just ok and once again thank you for the great thing you are doing.”

If you have a spare laptop which you would like to donate to Robert to help with his studies please email [email protected], we would be very grateful and could take it to him in June!

In the Autumn two of our Maternity Worldwide volunteers, Karen and Jeremy, who had spent a year at our programme in Ethiopia, decided to move to Addis Ababa after enjoying their time spent in the country previously.

As part of their current work they went to Mettu where they were able to meet up with our student midwife Lensa who was on her placement at Mettu Government Hospital at the time to see how she was getting on with the second year of her course.  Karen and Jeremy were also able to give Lensa a laptop which had kindly been donated to Maternity Worldwide by a generous supporter.

Karen sent us this update on Lensa;

“Lensa is doing really well and is studying incredibly hard.  Her ability to speak English is improving at a rapid rate, which will help her in her exams – as they are all in English.  Interestingly, I met a few of her friends and they all had fairly poor English compared to her.  Her exam results remain in the ‘As’, which is no surprise as she studies every day.  She was doing her 3 week placement at the government hospital in Mettu whilst we were there, which was great as we were working in the fistula hospital in the same grounds.  Lensa was able to come into theatre to watch Jeremy repair a fistula and he taught her a bit about that.

Every morning at the hospital, the doctors do a round and the midwifery students all have to answer various questions about the patients and their conditions and treatments.  We were testing her on this and she was really well informed about things, Jeremy was impressed with her knowledge.

Lensa was really pleased with her laptop.  She is going to be using it to write her essays and also to access the various documents that the teaching staff give her to read (vast amounts!).

She remains committed to returning to the rural area to work once she has completed her training but for now she is enjoying the challenges of learning lots of new things and is eager to do well in her exams.”

We would like to say a huge thank you for everyone who took part in Muffins for Midwives last May, the money raised will pay for the remainder of Lensa’s midwifery course as well as the full 3 year course for Robert in Malawi.  If you would like to hold a cake sale, coffee morning or tea party to raise money to sponsor the training of midwives in Africa please click here for your free fundraising pack and more information.

Is it worse to be born poor or die poor?

‘Welcome to the World – Four Born Every Second’ is a moving documentary showing childbirth around the world by Why Poverty.

Every year 130 million babies are born.  Their life chances are a lottery depending on where they are born.  In Europe, six babies per 1000 will die before their first birthday. In Africa, it’s 82.  Through the stories of mothers and babies around the world, the documentary looks at how poverty affects childbirth, childhood – and everything beyond.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

Most deaths in childbirth can be prevented fairly easily and at a relatively low cost.  Maternity Worldwide have been finding sustainable ways of saving lives in childbirth for 10 years.  You can see some of the thousands of women we have saved here.

If you want to help save a mother’s life you can sponsor a safe birth – it costs just £15.  To find out more click here.

We would like to say a big thank you to The Week for choosing Maternity Worldwide as their charity of the week.  The issue goes on sale on 25th January 2014.

Thank you to everyone who has contacted us after seeing our appeal in The Week.

Maternity Worldwide, in partnership with The Ethiopian Embassy, were delighted to host a Symposium on Maternal and Newborn Health in Ethiopia at The Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia on Thursday 16^th January 2014.

The event presented the strategy of the Ethiopian Government to improve maternal and newborn health; how the UK Government is supporting this and showcased the work of Maternity Worldwide and its partners over the past 11 years in Ethiopia.

The evening included presentations from H.E. Ambassador Berhanu Kebede, Dr Adrian Brown – Chair of Maternity Worldwide, Dr Karen Ballard – Director of Research for Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia and Maternity Worldwide volunteer, Prof Andrew Shennan from Kings College London and was compered by Mary Russell – Trustee of Maternity Worldwide.  The attendees were from UK based NGOs and professional and academic institutions working in maternal and newborn health as well as policy makers and donors.  Open discussions took place to discuss best practice and the future of maternal and newborn health in Ethiopia.

Thank you to everyone who attended.

We are delighted to report that Lensa, our trainee midwife in Ethiopia has passed her first year of midwifery training and is now beginning her second year.  Lensa is really enjoying the course and is very happy at University.

Recently two of our previous volunteers Karen and Jeremy, who volunteered at our project in Gimbie for a year, have returned to Ethiopia and are living in Addis Ababa.  Lensa went to visit them and gave them an update on her studying.

Whilst in Addis Ababa, Lensa went to the FIGO (International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics) Africa Conference which was all about midwifery and maternal health.  Lensa was also invited to the British Embassy with Karen and Jeremy whilst she was there!  Lensa is really passionate about midwifery and expanding her knowledge whenever possible.  You can read about her previous progress here.

One thing which arose from the discussions with Lensa about her course is that all of the students get given all the lessons and literature on a CD (if they have a laptop) – otherwise they have to photocopy what they can.  This can lead to problems if the photocopier isn’t working or there isn’t any paper.  Can you help?  Do you have an old laptop (with a CD drive) which you don’t use any more and could donate to Lensa?

Please contact Maternity Worldwide on 01273 234033 or email [email protected] if you are able to help.

It costs us, on average, £80 a month to sponsor Lensa’s midwifery training, if you would like to sponsor a month of midwifery training please see our online shop here.