Thursday 10 May 2012

My African Experiences: After Birth

In the UK an ideal birth usually ends with baby being placed onto mum's chest.  This seems to be the stuff of dreams.  In my African experiences, this was miles away to what happened.

Often with luck, rather than judgement, the baby would be delivered in the delivery room.  A room in which a mop and bucket was kept, but both, as well as the water within the bucket had seen it's best days; and the water never noticably changed, but at least smelling of bleach.  A room which never looked clean.  A room which had sharps bins overflowing with used needles.

Baby would initially be placed onto mum's chest, but more for convience than anything else.  In this country which never had enough staff, the mother was purely used to hold baby whilst the cord was clamped, with pieces of wool tied around it, and cut with previously used scissors.  The baby would then be taken away from the mother.  If well, breathing and crying it would be rubbed with a Kanga, then weighed, and wrapped up tightly in a fresh Kanga.  It would then be placed on the side until mum was ready to leave the delivery room.  Whereby it would be carried to the post-natal room and placed next to mum.

If baby was not in a good condition it was frequently left to us, foreign students, to help revive the baby.  In practices more closely related to eras gone by, we would swing the baby by the legs, rub its back, rub its sternum (breast bone), anything to stimulate a cry.  If all of this failed, we would 'suction' the baby.  This had to be a last resort though.  Why?  Because the hospital did not have suction catheters, they had IV tubing cut down to size.  These 'catheter's were not single use either.  Not only had the been used for running medication through them, they then had been used on other babies, prior to being placed in bleach to disinfect them.  There was no removal of the disinfectant before popping the tube down babies nose and into it's lungs.  It was an unhygienic practice, but one of which we had no choice.

I was horrified by some of what I experienced.  Us, foreign students would hold the babies, rather than leave them on the side, side by side with the babies who never made it, who were also wrapped up but this time with their faces obscured.  We'd do our best to maintain safe, hygienic practices; to learn from the students who had gone before us, from those of us who had greater experiences in our own countries.  Whatever we could do, had little impact, but may be, just may be we made a difference to one mother or one baby somewhere.

3 comments:

  1. Which country did you go too?? I did my elective in Tanzania and this ^^ is so similar to what I saw there that it could have been me writing it (except your spelling and grammar is better ;D). I guess its pretty common across african countries though, but I don't know how many countries use the term "kanga" like Tanzania also does.

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  2. Where in Tanzania? I went to Zanzibar, I spent my time in Stone Town, and had a fantastic time. I learnt a lot. I didn't go out to learn 'medicine', but to learn about cultural differences, and there were plenty to reflect upon!

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  3. Hi sorry, I missed this! I went to Mbozi Hospital which was a rural hospital, nearest landmark was Mbeya about an hour away. Was about 16 hours from Dar by bus, but I visited Zanzibar at the end of my elective - lovely! But yes, definitely a LOT of cultural differences.

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