Saving Mothers

In the past three weeks, Saving Mothers’ Team members, Danielle Peress and Nichole Young-Lin, distributed a total of 40 birthing kits to comadronas (traditional midwives) in Guatemala. The program started off with a birthing kit distribution and training meeting on January 7^th. Fifteen comadronas attended the meeting and received Saving Mothers’ birthing kits, which contain the basic materials for a clean delivery.

Two weeks later, our team held another meeting to assess the comodronas’ reactions to and use of the birthing kits. Two comadronas used the birthing kits during previous week and were able to teach their fellow comadronas by  demonstrating how to use the birthing kits. These two comadronas expressed their satisfaction with the Saving Mothers’ kits. The comadronas also showed us their own instruments for delivering babies. Saving Mothers also distributed birthing kits to comadronas in a nearby village called San Juan.

Overall, the project has been extremely well –received and the comadronas look forward to the expansion of our birthing kit initiative in Guatemala.

Each year, over 20 million premature babies are born and 4 million of them die mainly due to the fact that they are not able to keep warm and lack access to an incubator. In this video, TED Fellow, Jane Chen, invents a life-saving tool that keeps premature babies warm. Using a low-cost, wax-like substance that has a melting point of body temperature, parents and traditional birth attendants can melt the wax substance in warm water. The wax stays at a constant temperature for 4 to 6 hours at a time, which can then be reheated. Chen’s Embrace infant warmer will allow resource-poor families a way to keep their premature baby warm for $25 instead of the up to $20,000 it costs for an incubator.

This article from Nicholas Kristof for the New York Times explains how the lack of key micronutrients such as folic acid (aka vitamin B9), iodine, zinc, iron and vitamin A in developing countries is causing deformities due to neural tube defects, as well as brain malformation, anemia and blindness.  The good news is that micronutrient deficiencies is one of the cheapest problems to address, typically done by adding micronutrients to common foods. 

Read the article to learn more, and visit the websites of Project Healthy Children, Hellen Keller International, and Vitamin Angels.