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MOTHERS: AUSTRALIAN WOMEN REACHING ACROSS THE OCEAN TO HELP THEIR “SISTERS” GIVE BIRTH IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD

As Australians prepare to celebrate Mother’s Day this Sunday, DAVID ADAMS reports on an initiative aimed at helping reduce the chance of women in developing countries from dying in childbirth…

Victorian mother-of-three Hollie Boniface says she gained a little insight into what many women in developing countries face in childbirth when her second child, now seven-year-old Evie, was born in the car while trying to reach the hospital.

The 32-year-old says just experiencing something of the “fear and uncertainty that comes with not having medical staff around you” when giving birth has led her to reflect on the fact that it was a circumstance many women around the world routinely face. “(F)or me it was highly abnormal but that’s their normal situation.”

MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Mariska Meldrum and a new mother during her recent trip to Uganda. PICTURE: World Vision Australia

 

Last year she was among hundreds of Australian women who took part in pilot project being run by World Vision and the Birthing Kit Foundation (Australia) under the umbrella of Vision Sisters.

The project, which is being run again this year following the success of the pilot, aims to help reduce the incidence of mortality among women in childbirth – estimated at 300,000 a year – through providing mothers in developing nations with clean birthing kits and the help of trained volunteer community health workers.

“It was something that really connected with me…” says Ms Boniface, who organised a group of 40 to 50 women at St Mark’s Anglican Church in Emerald on the outskirts of Melbourne to pack a couple of hundred of the birthing kits.

“Just imagining women in other countries not having the facilities that we do and the higher mortality rates that go with that, I really thought ‘Wow, this is such a simple thing to be able to do – pack this birth kit…but makes such a difference.”

As many as 25,000 kits were packed in the pilot project held last year but this year Vision Sisters founder Mariska Meldrum says they’re looking to more than double that number.

“We’re aiming to provide 60,000 clean birthing kits which we’re going to pack ourselves and we’re also going to be helping World Vision train volunteer community health workers to walk with these women through their pregnancy and the first year of their baby’s life,” she says.

Noting that the vast majority – as many as 99 per cent – of the deaths of mothers in childbirth occur in the developing world, Ms Meldrum says the project aims to provide a means by which Australian women can “stand by our sisters living in poverty and facing injustice around the world”.

“We really see the beauty and the value in every woman and believe that we’re called to open up our arms and our hearts to these women,” she says.

The kits produced this year will go to women in countries including Afghanistan, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania.

Costing just $3 each, they contain six items – a plastic sheet for the mother to lie on, soap to prevent infection, gloves for the caregiver, gauze for wiping the newborn’s eyes and the mother’s perineum, string to tie the umbilical cord and, most importantly, a sterile scalpel to cut the umbilical cord.

“They cost less than a cup of coffee but the aim of them is to prevent infection that kills babies and mothers,” says Ms Meldrum. “It kills babies largely through them contracting tetanus through them being born into an unclean environment.”

The process works like this: women form a group, register, and then fundraise for the event – a $10 donation will buy two birthing kits and put $4 towards training a volunteer community health worker. Based on how much they raise, the group are then sent a pack containing all the elements for the kits and instructions on how to put them together with an eye to sanitation. Once packed, they are sent to World Vision and then on overseas.

“Just imagining women in other countries not having the facilities that we do and the higher mortality rates that go with that, I really thought ‘Wow, this is such a simple thing to be able to do – pack this birth kit…but makes such a difference.”

– Hollie Boniface

Ms Meldrum, who has recently returned from a trip to Uganda, has seen firsthand the difficulties women can face.

“Half of all women in Uganda give birth without a health worker – so they give birth on their own, at home, or without the facilities to help prevent infection,” she says.

“So as women, and as a mother myself, we feel really blessed to be able to give birth in Australia and this is really our opportunity to be able to pay it forward and help these women have a clean and safe childbirth to help give these women and their child the best start.”

Under the pilot project conducted last year, about 100 women’s groups, ranging from 20 to 150 women in size – were involved.

“We had a lot of church women’s ministry groups get involved and actually use it as an event that they could invite their non-Christian friends and members of the public to…” says Ms Meldrum.

“It’s a non-threatening kind of event that a church could hold in their women’s ministry to invite the school mums and the playgroup mums to come along and join them in a project that’s going to have real impact.”

World Vision have almost 100 groups involved already this year but are aiming to have as many as 300 involved. They hoping to have the 60,000 kits ready by the end of September.

The clean birthing kits are the first project being run under the umbrella of Vision Sisters but Ms Meldrum says they will be looking to be involved other projects in future years. “But all of them will be (aimed) at directly assisting women and children,” she says.

“It’s that sense of sisterhood – we are all created equally and it’s recognising that we have sisters a plane flight away who are in desperate need and we can actually do something to help.”

~ www.worldvision.com.au/visionsisters

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