Clinic Day

School children watch as the midwife listens to a baby's heartbeat.  

I love the drive  along the sea and up into the mountains of LaGonave. I study the soil and how many domesticated animals people have.  I notice if children are in school or walking along the roads.  I notice the location of the central market and how far it is form the village we are visiting.  Was World Vision once serving the community and is there now a hole in past services?   I notice these things as we pull into a lovely cluster of school and well and church.  It flat and the soil is a rich, dark color with well tended crops.  The churches large and all the buildings are well cared for.  This village has a strong partnership back in the United States and so perhaps this is the result of  long term care and support.

The ajan sante greets us.  There is no sign of the matrons and I wonder why.  We set up the church, pulling a series of shower curtains on a rope across the church.  They are sue to mobile clinics and know what to do. This is not true in our next site.  But it is always the same process sod setting up and turning any available site into a clinic while women sit on steps or under trees.

The midwife provides prenatal care on a school room floor.





The mobile clinics see about 25women on their first day. The plan is for the midwives to return once a month.
For the entire island to gain access to care it would require about 20 mobile clinics visiting villages once a month.  If each village had 50 women who needed care ( prenatal, postpartum and family planning ) it would cost about $2500 per village or $50 a woman.  With the ability to choose pregnancies and to gain reasonable assurance that they and their children would survive pregnancy and birth, families can begin to build strong futures. That women can choose when to have a baby and can have a chance not to die in birth is a human right.   What we need is 20 groups to adopt one village and to have that process run by the women of LaGonave; by the midwives and agent santes and mothers.   This seems pretty basic, right?   Its about like saying, there will be no rocks on the roads.  It seems impossible.