Blog
-
The Clinic’s new Nurse Midwife, Heryne, arrived in Duk last week with a large task in front of her. She is one of too few skilled midwives in all of South Sudan, and the only one for more than 100 miles. Maternal death rates are as high as 865 per 100,000 live births, and 1 in 10 children dies before age 1. In addition to her duties at the clinic, such as vaccinating mothers and children, providing antenatal check-ups, and conducting deliveries, Heryne will also be in charge of mentoring and training the 25 Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) from throughout the county for whom the Duk Lost Boys Clinic held a training in December. These women will conduct most of the 2,700 deliveries that occur yearly in Duk County.
Arriving from her native Kenya, Heryne’s first reaction upon arriving in Duk was that something was wrong and the plane had landed in the wrong place. But the half-mile strip of dirt on which the small caravan plane landed is actually the airstrip, and Duk County is really that remote, with no paved roads, electrical grids, or cities for hundreds of miles.
Just a few days into her time in Duk, Heryne jumped into a vehicle to go and visit some of the TBAs in the field. Arriving at a village, the team was greeted by one of the TBAs, Atoch, who was dressing a minor wound on a small boy. After exchanging initial greetings, they talked through a translator about past deliveries, common health problems in the area, and what would help Atoch in her duties. Heryne will conduct a practicum training at the Clinic for each TBA, showing them how to conduct an antenatal check-up, guiding them through deliveries, and describing the clinic’s new counseling, testing, and treatment services for HIV/AIDS offered to pregnant mothers in the Prevention of Maternal to Child Transmision (PMCT) of HIV. The TBAs will also be provided with safe birthing kits (consisting of a sterile razor, gloves, cloths, and other items for conducting deliveries when mothers can’t reach the clinic), flashlights, rain boots, and a rain coat, for use in the wet season when flooding is very common.The next day, Heryne was arranging her exam room in the clinic, and lamenting out loud how she was waiting for her first delivery in Sudan. One of the staff was in the labor ward, hanging a privacy screen, when a group of women rushed in and helped a young woman as she kneeled on the floor. They took a step back, revealing a young woman with a very round belly. With the local TBA at her side, Heryne got her wish just a few moments after she had made it, delivering a healthy baby girl with little complication. She guided the TBA in examining the placenta to be sure it was intact, and the TBA knew exactly how to dispose of it properly.
The problem of maternal child health in South Sudan is a two-edged sword, represented by the fact that, according to a study by UNICEF and others, girls in South Sudan are more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than to finish primary school—illustrating both the lack of health services and the small number of trained Sudanese women for such roles. But there is always hope—and it can be seen in Duk, born with each successful delivery these women conduct.
