STARS Foundation

Impact Foundation Bangladesh: Delivering Healthy Babies

Entering the house of Sova Das, Jhorna Rani finds Sova holding what looks like a bundle of blankets. Sova begins to gently unwrap the layers of cloth to reveal a tiny baby boy, sleeping soundly. The boy was delivered six days ago at her house with the assistance of Jhorna Rani.

Jhorna is affectionately known in the village as Doctor Apa, which means “Madam Doctor”. She is actually a Traditional Birth Attendant, the only one in the Mathpara village at Meherpur district in South-West Bangladesh. Jhorna was one of the 50 women from the district selected last year to take part the in skill development training for Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA). The training was offered by Impact Foundation Bangladesh (IFB) through its hospital in Meherpur district. The objective of this training is to enhance capacity and develop skills of local traditional birth attendants as in rural Bangladesh more than 90% of child deliveries happen at home with the assistance of a TBA. It is well recognised that one of the main causes of high maternal, infant, child mortality rates is the involvement of unskilled traditional birth attendants during child delivery.

Prior to receiving the training from IFB, Jhorna practiced the same services and followed the lessons learned from her grandmother and mother. When Jhorna was asked how she benefited from the training, she stated: “it has helped me to learn and understand new things. For example, I learned from my grandmother that during delivery process the room should be dark and closed otherwise ill-spirit can enter the room and affect the new-born. Now I understand how fool I was. Enough light and proper ventilation is essential both for mother and child”. She also added: “Now, I am able to refer the pregnant women to hospital as I can identify the danger signs of pregnancy.”

Sova and her husband, Sriakanto Barman, already have one daughter aged five and the new-born is their second child. Sova felt more relaxed about giving birth as she had previously experience d child delivery. But the night when the baby boy was born was more stressful for both Sova and her husband. It was 12.15am when Sova started feeling delivery pain. Her husband felt helpless as it was late night and there were no vehicles available to take his wife to hospital. He knocked on his neighbour’s door, Fatema, to ask for help. Fatema is a member of the Mathpara Mothers Club supported by Impact Foundation Bangladesh and knew Jhorna Rani had received TBA training last year.

Jhorna received an emergency phone call from Fatema and arrived at Sova’s house around 1.15 am with her delivery kit box provided by IFB. After checking Sova’s condition, Jhorna realised there was not enough time to take her to hospital as the closest hospital is 2 kilometres away from the village. Jhorna decided to conduct the delivery onher own as she found no major delivery complications.

Sova’s husband was desperately waiting outside and anxious to know how things were going inside of the delivery room. Finally, Jhorna came out with some excellent news: Sova had given birth to a healthy baby boy. “We are so fortunate that we have a skilled birth attendant in our village and that she is very supportive”, Sova’s husband said.

TBA Jhorna stated, “I have delivered babies before with the knowledge that I learned from my mother and I used to feel nervous as I had never received any formal training. Now I feel relaxed as I have received extensive training from Impact Foundation Bangladesh so I know how to deal with complications and when to refer to hospital. There are hundreds of women in rural areas of Bangladesh who are working as Traditional Birth Attendants without any institutional training. They also need to be trained to become more skilled and provide safe delivery services to women to reduce mother and child death.”