REGINA – A 25 cent kit could save the lives of new mothers in Nepal.
The country north of India and home to Mount Everest is 90 percent rural and most of its 25 million people are poor. The maternal death rate averages 600 per 100,000 births compared to Canada’s three deaths per 100,000.
Birthing kits are a simple solution, said Norma Wildeman, a nursing instructor at the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology who worked on health education projects in Nepal from 1996-2003.
Wildeman said the kit includes a poster that provides labour and delivery instructions in pictures because only a quarter of females can read. Since doctors or midwives attend only one Nepalese delivery in eight, the kit contains items to ensure the mother and baby stay healthy: soap for the birth attendant to wash her hands; a sheet of plastic to put under the mother; string to tie off the baby’s umbilical cord and a clean razor blade to cut the cord.
Read Also
Well-being improvement can pay off for farms
Investing in wellness programs in a tight labour market can help farms recruit and retain employees
Babies were dying of tetanus because their cords were cut with dirty kitchen knives or gardening tools. The kit contains only half a blade because men were taking the full blades from their wives’ kits to shave.
Wildeman said the kit is available for free in Nepal from the aid group Save the Children and is sold in pharmacies throughout the country.
She told the 96 delegates to an Oct. 14 Canadian area conference of the Associated Country Women of the World that any help Canada gives to Nepal must be appropriate to the country, where manual labour and subsistence farming prevail. But there is a need to continue such assistance, she said, because most of Nepal’s gross domestic product comes from only two sources: foreign aid and tourism.
During her stay in Nepal she noticed many similarities to Canada. Most Nepalese are reserved people, like Canadians, and they share a border with more boisterous, aggressive India, a situation much like what Canada finds with the United States.
Although Nepal has laws against child labour and marriages of girls younger than 16, these are often flouted.
Cooking is done inside straw roofed, brick houses using wood or cow manure as fuel. Chronic bronchitis is common in women and it can turn into a fatal case of pneumonia. Wells are often contaminated, resulting in diarrhea, which is the No. 1 killer of the Nepalese babies who survive birth. People are unaware of germs, just as the western world was until the late 1700s.
“How do you explain to somebody that there are invisible things on your hands … or in your water that are making your baby sick?” said Wildeman.
She said women do most farm work by hand and keep livestock, usually goats or poultry. A typical farm is an acre. Usually half the crop goes to the landlord, leaving the family with enough to feed itself for three to six months. Men and women work as manual labourers to raise money to buy food.
Wildeman said the basic diet of rice with lentil soup, curried vegetables and mustard greens is generally adequate except for a shortage of vitamin A sources that lead to eye problems and iodine that leads to thyroid problems.
While Nepal had set up a good health-care system with rural clinics supported by regional hospitals, a 10-year-long civil war with Maoist rebels and deaths in the ruling king’s family led to danger.
Health-care workers were reluctant to venture into the countryside because of the possibility of kidnapping or death. However, tensions have been eased since April, she said. The Maoists are asking to be represented in Parliament.
