| Decreased infant mortality in Afghan villages Operation Mercy
09/21/2006
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You are probably aware that Afghanistan has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Operation Mercy's staff has been teaching "BLiSS" - Birth Life Saving Skills under the supervision of one of our midwives for more than a year in northern Afghanistan. She shares some highlights from this very important work: "We found that our training in BLiSS has been very effective in the village. The group of women who went through our training 5 months ago assisted in 57 birth deliveries after the training. Amazingly, neither the mothers nor the babies died during pregnancy and delivery. The other group, who attended the training 10 months ago, said that they hadn't seen any death in the 40 deliveries that they assisted in after the training. This result must encourage the village people who were used to seeing the deaths of many mothers and babies. We were amazed by their vocal communication skill as well. The trained women have spread the new information that they learned in the community so well despite lack of telephones or internet access. Most of the women can't even read. One of the participants saw a baby who didn't start breathing after the birth. She practiced the resuscitation method which she just learned through the BLiSS training and the baby started breathing. In this village, when a baby doesn't start breathing, they used to heat up a big pot for rice. Then they would cover the baby with the hot pot and wait until the baby starts crying... One of the male participants of our BLiSS training told us his story. His wife had a birth delay after the rupture bag. His parents told her to stay home and give birth at home like everyone else does. However, the man who was attending Men's BLiSS insisted that he had to take his wife to the hospital in Mazar. So he took her to the hospital and his wife and the baby survived. This is very unusual since most men in Marmal don't allow their wives to go to any hospitals and clinics. That has been causing a lot of death of mothers and babies. Through the Men's BLiSS training, we encourage men to save 10 Afs per day during their wives' pregnancy so that they can send their wives to the hospital if any problems happen during pregnancy and delivery. It's encouraging to see that many School teachers and Mullahs have attended Men's BLiSS. These people can spread the new ideas and information to many people effectively in the community".
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