Stories From Health Workers: Traditional Birth Attendants
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Planet Care
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Suite 200
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-594-4027
info@planetcare.org
My first journey to the Mae Tao clinic was pretty amazing, what an intense place. The thing that made the biggest impression on me was the eagerness and motivation of the numerous clinic volunteers and staff members. While there, it was difficult to fully comprehend how all-consuming the work of the clinic staff was; every staff member I met lived basically right there on the clinic compound premises, and the dedication I witnessed was inspiring. Compared to some other parts of the world I have worked in, I was truly struck by the seriousness, the intensity, the commitment, and the desire to learn that I encountered during that trip. Still, it made me worry about the mental health of many of the workers - not only have they suffered through unimaginable experiences, they now live and work in close quarters with the same small number of people each day, with constant feelings of instability and uncertainty looming overhead. It is a situation that so many of us in the western world cannot even contemplate...
During my visit, I was helping to organize the training component for the Reproductive Health Program of the back pack team. Most members of the audience were women serving as traditional birth attendants (TBAs), or assistants to TBAs. Throughout the course of the training, I was struck by how very young so many of these women seemed, they could not have looked more than 17 or 18 years old...but the responsibility they literally carried on their shoulders was astounding. Here they were, young, scared women, many of them not having had children before, having to traverse through treacherous territory to meet other young women and help deliver their babies, all with minimal supplies, minimal comfort, and essentially no steps to take in case of an emergency -- what happens if a woman starts to hemorrhage during or after labor? Where can these women go? How can they get there? Does getting there introduce more potential risk (landmines, stray gun fire, etc) than trying to care for this woman on the forest floor, or in her dark hut, or wherever it is that she is delivering? I am convinced that had we had the time to share more experiences, each of the fifty-plus women in that training room could have told a story that would have awed us all.
On a lighter note, when our training topic switched to family planning, Naw Doh facilitated the training, and spearheaded the important effort to de-stimgatize condoms...in a setting where all kinds of rumors and misperceptions about condoms abound, and where young men and women are generally shy and reserved in broaching topics of sexual health, it was great fun to see Naw Doh pull out her plastic penis model and demonstrate just how a condom is put on. More than that, it was telling to look at all the wide eyes in the group, staring at this demonstration, and being shocked and fascinated by what a condom actually felt like...the hands shot up during this stage of the training, many questions were asked about the hows, whys, and what-ifs of condom use, and it was clear that Naw Doh had successfully introduced an important topic of discussion.
There are lots of other things that are still floating in my head from that trip... my first trip to the amputee ward, for instance, and the young man who so graciously smiled at me while holding up one stump of a leg with one hand and struggled to eat his rice with his other hand. They have left some indelible images in my mind, images that I am still processing now.
-- Britta Beenhakker, PhD Candidate, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health
Copyright Planet Care
