Help Pregnant Moms Give Birth Safely in Disasters

PIURA, Peru – In the first months of 2023, torrential rains flooded the streets of Veintiséis de Octubre in Peru’s northwestern Piura district, interrupting city services and trapping people in their homes. For 30-year-old mother-of-two Miryam, it added another level of anxiety to her pregnancy. 

Getting to check-ups became difficult – the dirt roads in her neighbourhood were waterlogged, and there was no money for alternate transport. Even worse, plagues of rats, flies and mosquitoes had arrived with the floods, bringing with them the threat of water-borne disease. 

Your gift of $25 could provide 5 women with UNFPA Emergency Birth Kits and give them the items they need to prevent infection during childbirth. 

“We had to disinfect everything. But I still caught dengue fever,” Miryam told UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. 

Climate emergencies present particular dangers for women and girls, cutting off access to essential sexual and reproductive health services, elevating risks of gender-based violence and heightening vulnerability to illness. During the flooding emergency in Piura, one out of five maternal deaths was associated with or caused by dengue.

Miryam  had already been told that her pregnancy would require special attention, given she’d delivered her first two children via Caesarean section. Doctors warned a third surgery could be risky. 

Still, she struggled to get the care she needed. That is, until she heard a knock at the door. 

Miryam’s visitor that day was a midwife serving as part of a group organized under the UNFPA-supported Saving Lives project, implemented together with local partner organization Prisma. 

$400 equips a midwife to support 50 safe deliveries in her community. 

As thousands of women like Miryam were prevented from visiting health centres due to flooding, economic issues and care-taking duties, the Saving Lives project brought care to their doors.

“I had no one to leave my children with because my husband was away working as a fisherman,” Miryam said. “The group told me they were coming to see me for my check-ups.”

Since May 2023, trained midwives have been visiting women like Miryam across the flood-affected regions of Piura, Tumbes and Lambayeque. Members have been able to identify and support nearly 150 pregnant women with services like prenatal check-ups, and to enable more than 4,500 women to access sexual and reproductive health services. 

“They go tirelessly door-to-door to provide sexual and reproductive health counselling and identify pregnant women. They haven’t given up,” said obstetric health coordinator Bertha Liñán, whose health centre collaborates with the UNFPA-backed project. 

“They helped us increase our staff numbers and reach places we couldn’t before.” 

For Miryam, the care provided by the midwives has made a major difference in her pregnancy. She no longer feels endangered. “My life has changed a lot since they arrived,” she said.

Midwives save lives – and yet, the world has far too few of them. According to UNFPA, nearly 1 million are missing from the workforce, despite being able to meet about 90 per cent of global need for essential sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health interventions.

After consulting with midwives, Miryam made the choice that she will not have any more children. “I made that decision with my husband as part of our family planning,” she said.

Although heavily pregnant and in pain, Kaindo waited patiently along with dozens of other women on a row of benches under a tarpaulin tent. 

UNFPA provides pregnant women in the Democratic Republic of Congo and around the world with emergency birth kits, so they can safely deliver their babies even in the most dire emeregencies. Your gift of $25 today could provide 5 women like Kaindo with an emergency birth kits.

The women were hoping to be seen by a team of midwives at a mobile clinic run by UNFPA, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, set up in the Bulengo camp for people displaced by fierce fighting and relentless insecurity in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

For Kaindo, the visit would turn out to be much more eventful than she thought. “At the antenatal consultation, she had intense back pains and felt unwell,” said Dorcas, one of the clinic’s midwives. 

She was swiftly transferred to the examination room, where another midwife, Solange, tried to identify the problem.

“When she arrived, we wanted to examine the cervix,” said Solange. “But suddenly her water broke and I noticed the baby's head... 15 minutes later, she gave birth.” 

Believing she had another month to go, the young mother-to-be was surprised to learn she was in fact full term at nine months pregnant. Luckily for mother and baby, the delivery went smoothly and the mobile health team ensured they were safe to be released. 

One of the only options for thousands of women and girls in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to access essential sexual and reproductive health care, the clinic is one of three set up by UNFPA in displacement sites. The facilities support pregnant women and newborns as well as providing medical treatment for survivors of violence and referrals to legal and psychological services as needed.  

The Bulengo camp is currently sheltering over 100,000 people displaced by the deepening crisis in eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Millions have been caught up in the violence and are increasingly vulnerable to climate disasters, disease outbreaks and a severe lack of basic services. 

For the estimated 220,000 pregnant and displaced women, of whom more than 4,500 will give birth each month with no safe refuge or secure access to health care, the situation is critical.

Supporting an average of four deliveries per day, the presence of midwives at the mobile clinic can often mean the difference between life and death. So far for every pregnant woman in this displacement camp, it has meant life.

A contribution of $400 could equip midwives like Dorcas and Solange with the supplies and medicines they need to guide 50 women through safe deliveries. 

Since it was set up in February 2023, the clinic has recorded zero maternal deaths – a staggering achievement in itself, but especially so in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where three women die every hour during labour or from pregnancy-related conditions – one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates.  

This year, UNFPA-supported health facilities and mobile clinics have made childbirth safe for more than 30,000 women in eastern provinces, with some 15,000 women accessing mobile clinics like the one Kaindo used. 

Skilled midwives are available and equipped to meet women's and newborns’ needs 24 hours a day, every day. “It's a relief for pregnant women and survivors of violence – they can now access health care without having to travel long distances,” explained Sifa, one of the midwives. 

For $90, you could give two women everything they need to care for themselves and their babies after birth. 

“As an internally displaced person myself, working at the mobile clinic means I can continue to practise my profession and assist these displaced women," Sifa said.

In the Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, some 5.5 million people are internally displaced, urgently in need of access to functioning health facilities, contraception, post-rape support, and emergency obstetric care. Around 2.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women will also face acute malnutrition in 2023.

Even where these services are available, reaching them can be impossible or fraught with danger. The consequences are far-reaching: More women could die during pregnancy and childbirth and there are increased vulnerabilities to sexually transmitted infections, perpetuating cycles of poverty and gender inequality.