Sponsor a Mum researches maternal mortality in Hodzo

We decided to meet back up with our friends from England, Antonia and Toby, and go to one of the villages outside of Ho in which they are doing some research for the charity they are starting named Sponsor A Mum. So we took Heather out with us for the day and had a first hand experience listening to some of the broad range of issues these women deal with regarding maternal health. This happened to be a day when the govt was sponsoring a free clinic with immunizations and weight checks for the babies, so there were plenty of women to interview. Heather and I sat through ten heartbreaking stories while Antonia asked the questions. These women typically do not have money to get to a hospital because the transportation alone is too expensive, and the fathers of the children refuse to help them out in most cases. They must earn the money themselves just so that they can have a birth attendant in their home when they deliver, and they typically do this by carrying 70 pound jugs of water on their heads for many miles back and forth to the villages for up to 1 dollar a trip. All this and they are 6 to 9 months pregnant, so one can imagine the problems this poses to their actual delivery. One particular women was in labor for one week and gave birth to twins, at home. Should she have had any major complications (even though she bled for 5 hours after giving birth), she would have died due to the fact that she could not afford transport. And this was in a relatively wealthy village compared to what Antonia and Toby had seen thus far. It was an extremely emotional day that affected all of us deeply. Rob and I plan on getting much more involved while we are here and after we return, and they are setting us up to go into some villages on our own and conduct our own research along the way. Toby and Antonia are now off to Afghanistan to continue their work. We are thinking of you guys!