Welcome to SI’s special SoroptiVoice blog series, bringing you
stories from Papua New Guinea, where this year’s President’s December
10th Appeal is taking place.  These stories paint a poignant picture of
what life is like for women in PNG, with a focus on pregnancy and
mothers.  There are many SI activities and materials for International
Human Rights Day & this year’s SI focus on women’s right to safe
motherhood, in particular access to skilled birth attendants.  Please
explore our website and social media sites to learn more and to find out
how you can take action too!

  

Ruth’s story

The Walium Health Centre has a qualified midwife and several other staff in their
maternity section.  This Centre is at the
end of the paved section of the highway 120 km from Ramu. The mountainous
terrain make it difficult for the mothers to come to the Centre to give birth,
and most, 70%, give birth at home.  The
one’s who do come live along the highway, and even then 20% of those who arrive
at the Centre to give birth simply arrive out of the blue.

Getting
mothers to the Health Centre if there are problems during labour often poses
enormous difficulties.  Ruth’s story
illustrates this.

Ruth
lived in a remote gold mining area in the mountains out from Walium. This area
is only accessible by rough tracks, or by light plane.  Ruth was 25 and this was her first baby.  She went into labour and had been in labour
for three days when the mining company agreed to transport her by helicopter to
Walium. On her arrival at the Health Centre, an examination revealed Ruth
suffered from an obstructed labour and would need to be referred on to the
nearest hospital in Madang for specialist help.

It
took a further day for the transport to be organised.  The Health Centre has an ambulance but it
wasn’t in use.  It had been in the
workshop for some months while they sourced the funding for the parts to repair
it.  There was no money available for
such a costly journey even if a vehicle could be found.   Eventually, the Health Centre staff  appealed to the police for help and they
agreed to transport Ruth to Madang.  This
was considered a very generous offer, as the journey would entail time and
money taken from an already small police budget.

Ruth
was made as comfortable as possible in the back of the police car, and with
many misgivings she was sent on her way. 
The staff knew that the road to Madang, a four hour journey, was mostly
unformed and very rough, climbing over the steep mountain range to the hospital
on the other side.  They knew this would
only mean greater suffering for Ruth who had already gone through such a
traumatic time. Tragically, there was not a happy ending to this story; Ruth
and her baby died on the way.

Many
mothers and babies die in this area.  One
way of reducing this is to train the traditional village birthing attendants
(VBAs) to look for the early signs of problems with a pregnancy or labour, and
encourage them to refer the mothers on to a Health Centre as soon as these
signs arise.  The largest number of women
having problems are the mothers who have too many births, or have many births
too close together. Advocacy for family planning is a big feature of  all contact with women at the Walium Health
Centre.

One way of reaching more pregnant women in areas
such as this is through mobile clinics that go out to the outlying
centres.  The Walium Health Centre has a
mobile clinic the staff have been doing just that.  Going out has enabled them to do antenatal
checkups, immunise babies and provide IUDs, the preferred family planning
method.  Unfortunately, the mobile clinic
has also been in the workshop for some months waiting for funding for very
necessary repairs.