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.
from the July 10, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
But war may be changing that. The training, which had been resisted, is now increasingly being embraced, giving women both financial independence and positions of respect in their communities.
Samia Hassan, a reproductive health officer with UNFPA in Khartoum, says that midwives have become so valuable in Sudanese society that villages that cannot afford to train one have sent their men out to marry midwives from other villages and bring them home.
"Nowadays, people want midwives in their village and there's a waiting list for classes," says Fatima Houssain, dean at the UNFPA-funded Midwifery School of Al Fasher.
In a typical year, the school trains about 30 young girls to become unpaid village midwives or salaried midwives in urban hospitals. This year, enrollment jumped to 82 students, a sign of changing attitudes among the displaced Darfuris who have flooded this oasis town in North Darfur.
"In Darfur, the rate of illiteracy is around 74 percent, so in that kind of society, midwives become role models for young girls," says Ms. Hassan.
In a classroom full of young women in white veils, Fatima Alameen demonstrates the techniques of a safe birth with a plastic dummy on a table. With rubber gloves and surgical mask, she "catches" a newborn baby – a handsewn cloth doll with an umbilical cord – wraps the baby in a towel and applies a clamp to the umbilical cord.
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