Healthcare to Save Mothers and Babies

In March 2014, the Trustees of Kids for Kids announced that they would be adopting a further five villages in Darfur.  The five villages are:  Fazy, Goz Byna, Hillat Hassan and Hillat Kharif, and the nomads community of Elkuma.  They will provide their package of projects including goat loans so that children will have milk, healthcare for both humans and animals, donkeys for transport, mosquito nets to prevent disease, blankets, donkey ploughs, crucially the repairing and digging of handpumps in the villages, and much more.  These projects lift whole communities out of extreme hardship.   We urgently need to train two midwives for each of these five new villages, plus in the villages we adopted in the last 3 years.   Our midwife training is a wonderful opportunity for village girls to have a career and support each other.  When they return from our 10 month training course in our purpose built compound they return with new status and have respect from their peers.

Through their training the village girls, who volunteer to take on this intense 10 month training course, have practical experience and many will have delivered twins and helped at caesarean births, although it is hoped that they will always be able to transfer expectant mothers in time for a Caesarean at El Fasher Hospital, if necessary.  When they return to their villages, their peers look to them for advice and give them new respect.  They save women's lives during childbirth and deliver healthy babies. But their job is not over - they also teach women the importance of nutrition and how to feed their babies so that they get the best possible start in life.

At the end of their training, Kids for Kids provide them with a uniform, leather sandals and a medical kit in a tin trunk. They also have access to a strong-cross bred donkey to enable them to travel quickly to their patients, plus a mobile phone so they can call for our donkey ambulance in emergency. The charity’s donkey ambulance is unique, and is often the only means of transport. "The thought of a journey to hospital on a stretcher between two donkeys is frightening" says Patricia. Kids for Kids solar lanterns mean that babies are not born in the smoke and light of a flickering fire.  

To date the charity has funded 108 midwives.

Village Midwives continue to be absolutely key to protecting mothers and babies from the trauma and risks of child birth. Over 1 million babies die within their first day throughout the world but in Darfur, our 108 midwives have saved the lives of hundreds.  

Our donkey ambulances are available so that Midwives can call for help if they need to take a labouring patient urgently to hospital.  As well as being trained to safely deliver babies in one of the harshest places in the world, they are also trained in baby nutrition and provide critical help to young mothers so that they do not feed small babies inappropriately in desperation.  This means that the babies in our villages are cared for long after their initial delivery.  

In 2012 we built a Kids for Kids Dormitory compound housing 40 new midwives each year, the midwives return to their villages fully equipped and ready to safeguard the women in their community from the dangers of child birth. It is hugely ambitious to raise funds for so many midwives each year but the numbers of lives our midwives save makes it imperative. If you can help fund a midwife please let us know.  It costs £2,000 ($3,400) to train one midwife but the support and knowledge that she returns to her village with, post training (10 months) is a commodity that all women deserve.