While I was pregnant with my twins, I began researching maternity care in Uganda. I was working on compiling a case for Stephen's Visa. I had a few options. I could go to Uganda to deliver. There, I would have the help of my husband and the benefit of rich organic food. I could deliver here in the states, and depend on help from family and friends, with the benefit of modern medicine. It was during this time I reached out to people around me for help. Some stepped up and a number of folks who were complete strangers helped above and beyond the call of duty. A few, who may have been overwhelmed by my prediciment, advised that I should go and let my husband take care of me.
No pregnant woman should have to read what I read, while knowing I was in the middle of a high risk pregnancy. But then again, no woman should have to deliver babies in the conditions that I read about. The statistics are aweful. It scars my soul, and brings the reality of these adverse conditions right into my back yard, to think that anyone would wish this on me or on any other human.
Below are links to an article published in The Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing. It is about the building of a NICU at Kiwoko Hospital. You can also follow Kiwoko Hospital on Facebook. Kiwoko Hospital
This isn't the only nightmare of a story I had run into. The largest hospital in Uganda, Kampala's International Hospital along with other hospitals in Kampala, were closing their doors to the public during a week long power outage in January of 2012. I delivered here in March 2012. Protests ensued after a member of the MP's staff, went to deliver a child at that hospital and died of excessive bleeding and a ruptured uterus. (See link below.) Entirely, preventative! A newly set up NICU, had just placed their newest set of twins in the donated incubators. But one twin died during the night because the incubator was not staffed and the power had gone out. My husband told me just recently, he had been speaking periodically with one of his customers about her twins and his twins as parents so often do who find themselves in the same situation. Just recently, he had inquired about her twins only to find out that one had died. The mother didn't really know what had happened but just that the child had developed a cough. According to the article below, malaria, pneumonia, and diarreha are among the main killers of children.
Now, instead of fretting over the stain in my child's onsie, let me just go and cry instead.
Actually, I'm not a nurse, nor was I ever in the medical field. But I do know that diagnosing pneumonia and diarreha is a very simple thing and administering the remedy is even more simple. But my thought process goes to the moment when I am there in Uganda and my child or some neighbor's child catches diarreha or pneumonia, is there some way I could have the remedy with me? I would have to get the remedy now, while here in the states.
Devlopment-of-a-Neonatal-Intensive-Care-Unit-in-Uganda-Africa.-Lester-D.-2002..pdf
Maternal Deaths on the Rise in Uganda
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