Mid-Wives for Haiti Helps to Lower Neo-natal Deaths

U.S mid-wives have arrived on a mission to bring down the death toll. And what they have found is distressing. The ratio of mid-wives to maternity patients is two for every 33 in labor. Mid-wives often work 24-hour shifts, sometimes for a week. Exhausted, they fall asleep, abandoning their charges. Women, who have already delivered, die from hemorrhaging that does not receive attention because of mid-wives' sleep deprivation. And during early hours of the morning they fear for their security, vulnerable to rapists. As a result they leave their patients alone.

To address these issues, an U.S. mid-wife began a non-profit, Mid-Wives for Haiti (MWFH), started to decrease childbirth-related deaths. Certified, skilled birth attendants (SBA) have been trained by MWFH in pre-natal and neo-natal skills. Besides sending SBAs to hospitals, MWFH has set up mobile SBA units to reach pregnant women in remote towns.

MWFH wants to build enough SBA health clinics so no woman need be without the services of a SBA. MWFH seeks to give Haitian women the knowledge and skills of a SBA so they may be a force for women's healthcare in Haiti's most poverty-stricken regions.

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