The Shocking Maternal Healthcare in Rural Zambia

childbirth is one of the most remarkable

and dramatic events the human body can

undergo

the strain on the muscles organs bones

among others is immense however not

everyone has the privilege of being able

to access the care that's needed

globally maternal mortality is the

leading cause of death among women and

girls of reproductive age in fact the

u.s has the worst infant and maternal

mortality rate of any high resource

country but it's low resource countries

like zambia that women are hit the

hardest in zambia pregnant women in

rural areas consistently deal with

limited medical care and as a result

often have poor maternal outcomes this

film draws us into the world of one of

those mothers as she courageously

embarks on her journey to successfully

deliver her child this is with grace

from national geographic explorer austin

meyers

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is

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okay i'm not

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but

after the night that i examined dress so

i went home to catch up some rest

around 23 hours i had a nook at my door

two women were knocking they said they

brought a woman in labor

so i thought maybe it was best not until

they explained no it's just another

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after examining that's when i saw that

this is a serious case

the fetal heart was less than 100 the

baby was in distress

so i had to cut the ambulance though due

to network failure

the lines wouldn't go through

the head was delivered and the shoulders

couldn't rotate

when the baby came out it couldn't cry

when the baby aspirated in konya there

was no suction machine there was only a

penguin sucker which wouldn't go deep

and remove those secretions

had to underback the baby

but without good effect the baby died

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foreign

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17

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my name is peter axona i am 55 years old

now

i'm a farmer i normally grow maize

groundnuts

green beans and some tomato

i'm married to grace jeberica and i've

stayed with my wife for now 16 years and

i have

four children with her the fifth is not

yet

born to my first wife i've got five children

they were supposed to be eight

but the three died at an age of their

ages

the first born daughter was memory she

had marelia she died at the age of four

years

when i lost my second bone i almost lost

my life because it trained me a lot

friends came

to advise me to those other friends that

also lost their children why should you

lose your life just because of this what

has happened to you

then the third one immediately she was

delivered she only stayed maybe one or

three minutes

then

the infant died

to experience death

at that age

you see your friend playing with his

baby i only thought why always on me

when my friends are keeping their

children but

i never took up my life

i didn't lose my faith because

i know

that death is there

what i only did was to

get more advices how to keep my state my

children

and that's what i'm still doing now

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be

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foreign

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foreign

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me

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attending to the population of 1061.

a clinic officer midwife and a nurse the

other one is an eht

in neighborhood we need a lot of

instruments we need there is a stair in

case the baby is born it has fixed here

we sustain a baby we need a suction

machine we need catheters to empty the

woman's bladder when they're in labor we

need sterilization machine but for here

katoba we do not have those instruments

this

building it has

solar lighting

so in the rain seasons we have to use

our phones for lighting

we learn to improvise because when there

are no things at least you you try to

think

instead of letting a woman to suffer

this clinic is just

for

no more deliveries and a complicated

delivery it has just to be referred

if the nurse notices that something has

gone wrong then the nurse will call the

hospital

for an ambulance to go and pick the

patient

okay let me just call the ambulance then

where can we go

it's good

right now we're responding to a call

at canada

center is about 10 kilometers away from

the main hospital

they are calling us for a and patamura

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okay

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and they have to come to a hospital

where there's facilities for theater and

so we then intervene by doing a cesarean

section

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so we have a big challenge because you

know we have 39 facilities being

serviced by

one ambulance a population of close to

200 000 people

and

these facilities are not like

concentrated in one place to go into

kartova which is one of our furthest

facilities

it takes about 1 hour 30 minutes we have

this huge challenge the nurse calls for

an ambulance in facility x which is 50

kilometers away says this woman is

bleeding and then we have another nurse

calling from another facility says i

have another one who has failed to

deliver

so now we are left with a dilemma

because you have to decide where do you

go to pick the patient

yes