Part I: Umama noSana Uthukela Community Project

Although I'm based in Johannesburg, I have been spending most of my time in the town of Ladysmith in the KwaZulu-Natal province and working closely with the Mpilonhle Santuary Organisation. Mpilonhle, which means holistic health in Zulu, is one of the original community-based NGOs that was sponsored by BMSF-STF program in the early days. 

Umama noSana Uthukela Community Project, meaning Mother and Child Community Project is one program I'm working on with Mpilonhle and the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine at the Univeristy of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. The project aims to 1) mobilize the community to improve demand for maternal and child health services and 2) revive clinic committee programs to ensure community participation and service provider accountability.

Many women in parts of the world, including South Africa (SA), have a high risk of dying while giving life. According to figures released by in 2010, there were 625 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in SA. Compare that to U.S. figure in 2007, the latest year for which data is available, the maternal mortality rate was 12.7 deaths per 100,000 live births. The SA Millennium Development Goal has set a target of 38 deaths per 100,000 live births for 2015. That means there's a lot of work still to be done!

Two-thirds of these largely preventable deaths are a result of non-pregnancy related infections, obstetric hemorrhage, and complications of hypertension during pregnancy. A myriad of factors have been identified as contributing to maternal mortality, including minimal antenatal care attendance, delay in accessing medical assistance, poor diagnosis, and sub-standard care by health workers. As for disease burden for children, the most common causes of death for kids under five are: AIDS-related death including TB (40%), deaths during neonatal period (18%), low birth weight (12%), diarrheal disease (11%), pneumonia (6%), severe malnutrition (5%), infections (3%) and birth asphyxia (3%). A healthy child starts with a healthy mom.

So in order to mobilize the community, we are developing and conducting household surveys to assess the challenges and gaps that exist as related to maternal and child health issues. This will serve as the basis of the IEC (Information, Education, and Communication) materials that we will subsequently develop to improve demand of these health services in the community. We drove out to clinics in four rural areas in the Uthukela District to introduce the project and hopefully get some buy-in from the community.

Mama Zwane, the director of Mpilonhle, is showcasing the project to community stakeholders at Watersmeet Clinic.

 

There were nearly 40 people in the audience at Watersmeet crammed into a rather small room, including community care givers (CCGs), nurses, traditional healers, and community leaders. 

Here we're relating the UN Millennium Development Goals to why we need health mothers in our community at the Driefontain Clinic. 

After a lively discussion with the group, they expressed significant interest and value in Umama noSana. I'm excited that the project is starting to roll out.

Some of us are mothers already, and many of us will be mothers one day. But all of us have mothers. Mothers risk their lives bringing us into this world, and that risk is often greater or less depending on her postal code, if she even has one. There's a disparity here, and we're going to help close it.

Cảm ơn mẹ...thank you mom.