SoroptiVoiceBLOG

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.