WUNRN
KENYA - SOLAR LAMPS REDUCE
CHILDBIRTH RISKS IN NORTHERN KENYA
GARISSA, Kenya (AlertNet) –
Hasna Muktar, a traditional birth attendant in remote Sankuri village in
northern Kenya, has met her share of challenges while delivering babies, from
snakebite and threatening hyenas to the choking fumes of kerosene lamps that
are widely used to provide a feeble light at night-time deliveries.
But that last problem, at
least, is now being overcome, thanks to the installation of solar panels and
bright, low-energy LED lights.
‘’The solar lamp has made my
deliveries and women education work simple as I charge it during the day and
start using it at night,” Muktar said. “In the past we use to worry on the cost
of the kerosene but now everything is in front of our door.’’
Sankuri village is 300
kilometres from the main regional town of Garissa and the arid area has poor
communication and transport networks, forcing residents to use donkey carts and
camel to ferry patients to hospitals.
The journey takes seven days to
Garissa and many patients die on the way before receiving medical attention.
Women in labour are particularly vulnerable, with obstructed delivery often
resulting in fistula or the death of mother and child.
But traditional midwives in
Sankuri offer an alternative – and one that is now solar-powered.
As the scorching sun sets on
the horizon, group of eight heavily pregnant women walk into the
expansive compound where Muktar has her ‘’delivery room’’, consultation room
and training room where she educates both pregnant and other women on
behavioural change and family planning.
The facility is built with
sticks and grass and the only source of water is from a shallow well. There is
no electricity.
HYENAS, SNAKES AND THORNS
The lack of power in the past
meant Muktar had to use a kerosene lamp at night to attend to births and other
emergencies, and to wind her way through the bush and along village paths to
home, facing dangers such as snake bites, attack by hyenas and stepping on
thorn trees used for fencing.
‘’For 25 years I have been
using kerosene lamps and sometime bright lights from the moon. I have been
bitten three times by snakes and that affected my work and inconvenienced many
pregnant women in Sankuri village,” she said.
As well, “the kerosene lamp
made health problems both to me and mothers with their newborn babies. I have
contracted respiratory infections on various occasions and also the use of
moonlight is quite tricky as I have to conduct deliveries in the open
air. I use moonlight only when kerosene is out of stock or when I
contract respiratory sickness,‘’ she said.
But now Muktar and other
traditional birth attendants have less to worry about after receiving portable
solar LED lamps and solar panels to charge them from Pajan Kenya, a local
non-governmental group backed by international NGO Afri-Ireland.
The system, which has been
delivered to 30 traditional birth attendants, takes five hours of sunshine to
charge lamps that then last as long as 12 hours.
The lamps are used by the birth
attendants to attend to women at night, and also during women’s education
sessions where a traditional attendant congregates more than 20 pregnant women
at her compound to go through family planning and behavioural change education.
CUTTING THE COST OF
DELIVERIES
Muktar said she has already
used the lamp during 185 births in Sankuri village – and that the technology is
bringing down the cost she must charge for her services. Formerly, she said,
she charged about 425 Kenyan shillings ($5) for a delivery, including the costs
of kerosene, transported from Garissa. Now a birth costs 255 Kenyan shillings
($3).
Pajan Kenya, the organisation
educating traditional birth attendant on the use of solar lamps, says the
project is an example of green energy empowering grassroots women and
contributing to reductions in maternal and child mortality in remote areas with
few health facilities.
Two thirds of Kenya's maternal
deaths are attributed to postpartum haemorrhage (severe loss of blood during or
after labour), sepsis (bacterial infection in the blood), eclampsia
(hypertension during pregnancy) or a ruptured uterus.
According to the last
demographic health survey, released by the government, Kenya has one of the
highest maternal death rates in the world at 448 per 100,000 live births.
Seventy percent of women in northern Kenya deliver under the care of
traditional birth attendants while 30 percent give birth at hospital, figures
show.