A salve amid Darfur woes: better midwives

International relief groups are training Darfuri women to ameliorate Sudan's maternal mortality rates – the fifth highest in the world.

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 10, 2007 edition

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Zamzam Camp, Sudan - Under the blazing noontime sun in this relief camp, Fatima Abdullah Abou does something she couldn't have done before the Darfur conflict began. She takes her patient, a young mother about to give birth, to get medical help at a local clinic manned by doctors for an international medical aid group, Relief International.

"She was in pain, and she's been trying to give birth for a while, so I came to this clinic to get help," says Mrs. Abou, who has been an untrained village midwife for some 25 years. As she speaks, her young charge is escorted into a waiting van for the six-mile drive to a maternity hospital in nearby Al Fasher.

It's one of the cruel ironies of the Darfur conflict, which has entered its fifth year, that it took a deadly war – that has killed 200,000 civilians, mostly of the region's non-Arab tribes – for many Darfuris to receive the first adequate healthcare of their lives.

Before the conflict, many families lived hours or even days away from hospitals. But now, as 2.5 million people displaced from their homes have migrated to camps like Zamzam, they are benefiting from the healthcare offered by groups like Relief International.

For Darfuri women – who, along with children, make up 80 percent of the displaced – the proximity of international organizations also offers a status-boosting opportunity to bring relief to others as trained midwives.

Sudan suffers the fifth-highest rate of maternal mortality in the world, with 1,700 women out of 100,000 dying while giving birth, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Infant mortality is even more common, with 150 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Despite a recent government push to train more midwives, the vast majority of villages in Darfur still don't have a trained midwife.

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Rich Clabaugh – Staff