Joyce lost her baby. Rose lost her mother. This tragic story is a microcosm of the dangers and challenges families face when a woman gives birth. I shot and edited this video story from Kalaki District, Uganda, for ChildFund Australia as part of a new campaign to help mothers and babies stay safe during pregnancy and childbirth. In Uganda a woman is 63 times more likely to die in childbirth compared to a woman in Australia, whereas a child is 11 times more likely to die at birth or soon after. As part of the initiative, the organization is training new community health volunteers, funding and mobilizing rural health outreach clinics, and distributing delivery kits to expectant mothers.
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This App Saves Lives
“You need a medium to tell people. When I show pictures and video, a client understands the information so much better. Mere verbal information does not have credibility and authority.” These words are not lifted from one of my recent sales pitches to potential clients. Rather, they were said by a community health worker named Sunita in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh. Sunita now uses a phone app to facilitate her work from house to house among pregnant and nursing women. Uttar Pradesh currently has some of the worst maternal and newborn mortality rates in all of India. When the government launched their ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) program in 2005, the goal was to place one such community health worker in every village in the country in order to reduce maternal and newborn deaths associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Today, with nearly 900,000 ASHAs, India has more[…]
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