Male TBAs helping fight maternal mortality

At a time all hand are on deck to help reduce and minimize maternal and infant mortality rates in the country, Mr. Emmanuel Akatoh, an experienced Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) in a predominantly female career, urges government andall stakeholder particularly males to support efforts to end maternal and child mortality in the country.

With over 150 deliveries to his credit over the past 44years as a TBA, Mr. Akatoh who is also known as Nana Dogo Moro, Chief of the Ewe settlers at Aportoyowoa, a village about 6km from the Goaso Cocoa Station, off the Hwidiem-Goaso Highway, says with collective efforts and support from all maternal mortality should be a thing of the past.

He recalls how he learned the act of delivering babies from his late grandmother as a young boy at Sogakope in the Volta Region but never practiced it until he relocated to Aportoyowoa in 1970, where he saw pregnant women struggling and suffering to give birth.

“I started to help in deliveries and was frequently called upon sometimes to help when the afterbirth delayed in coming,” he added.

Apart from her first child, Nana Dogo delivered his wife of all their six children as well as a number of his grandchildren with ease.

Although he has not performed deliveries that resulted in any complications or death over the years, he expresses worry about why women in the process of giving birth should lose their very lives.  

Papa Dogo, as he is affectionately called by the midwives at St. Elizabeth Hospital at Hwidiem in the Asutifi South District of the Brong Ahafo Region, narrated how he used herbs and other rehearsed traditional practices over the years to help in performing deliveries before receiving the training alongside other 27 TBAs in 2009, organised by the National Catholic Health Service in collaboration with the Catholic Diocese of Goaso and funded by Cordaid-The Netherlands.

He attested to the great enlightenment the 14-day training opportunity offered him and other TBAs, adding that it helped him to examine pregnant women, look out for possible danger signs and refer them to health facilities.

“The training for instance helped me in visiting and sensitizing pregnant women on the need to attend antenatal clinic as well as encourage lactating mothers to attend postnatal care,” he added.

Papa Dogo shared the experience of being woken at odd hours of the night to go for deliveries at very distant cottages, sometimes walking for hours and having to cross rivers before getting to where the pregnant women in labour were.

In his haste to go and perform one of the emergency deliveries in one of the hamlets recently, he described how he slipped and fell from a rickety-wooden access bridge to the hamlet. Though he sustained some injuries and bruises, he rose and went to the village to help deliver the pregnant woman of her baby.

Asked why he had to go after sustaining the injuries, he said the life of the woman in labour and the child were of concern to him, adding that was why he had to still go in spite of the pain he was going through after falling from the bridge.

Indeed, the TBAs work, as voluntary as it is, is not an easy task at all, as very often their time, efforts, sacrifices and risk to respond to the calls at odd hours is not compensated.

Answering how challenging the work is, Papa Dogo confirms that “the work is not easy at all”, noting that they are yet to receive any form of motivation for the work they were doing.

Madam Princila Asor Frimpong, Public Health Midwife, in-charge of the Reproductive Child Health (RCH) Unit at the St. Elizabeth Hospital described as impeccable the roles Papa Dogo and other TBAs who received training from surrounding towns and villages were contributing with regards to skilled deliveries.

She together with some midwives at the RCH Unit confirmed increased referrals of pregnant women to the Hospitals by the TBAs, who also accompany the pregnant women in labour to the hospital. The midwives also acknowledged the TBAs efforts in educating the pregnant women about the need to attend antenatal clinics, which according to reports has soared.

“Papa Dogo and the other TBAs are doing well as they have taken more active interest in the welfare of the expectant mothers and their infants, with their (TBAs) regular visitations, sensitization on appropriate diet and care expectant mothers and lactating mothers ought to take” Madam Frimpong added.

Touching on the eye opening experience the 14-day training offered him in areas of infection prevention during emergency deliveries, Papa Dogo suggested the replication of the training throughout the country to educate, sensitize and make TBAs help in enhancing skilled and safe deliveries in the country.

He called on the government and stakeholders to consider ways of supporting the TBAs to collaborate more effectively with health facilities to ensure more safe deliveries and reduce maternal mortality.

In a similar development, 80-year old Nayina Komoa, another male TBA at Kulgona a village of about 13 kilometers from Nalerigu in the East Mamprusi District of the Northern Region also recounted his experience as a TBA for the past 50years, and having delivered hundreds of babies, including 17 of his 20 children.

Hitherto the recent training he received together with 35 TBAs in the catchment area of the Baptist Medical Centre at Nalerigu in March 2014, he faced challenges in performing deliveries, with breech birth presentations and other complications.

Speaking through an interpreter, Nayina stated how beneficial the training has been to him and even demonstrated how to perform emergency deliveries, and also ensure infection prevention as well as refer pregnant women to the hospital.

Mr. Nelson Manduaya, in-charge of the Public Health Unit of the Baptist Medical Centre commended Nayina and other TBAs were doing and even confirmed an increase in referral from Nayina to the Hospital.

Like Papa Dogo, Nayina who is also a Traditional Medical Practitioner (TMP) said he learned the act of performing deliveries from his late grandfather and his mother who were conducting deliveries then.

Describing the 14-day training programme for the TBAs as an eye opener, Nayina commended the organizers seeing the need to educate them for them to collaborate to enhance skilled deliveries, and called for the training to be expanded and replicated to train more TBAs.

Nayina who is also a farmer said as part his work as a TBA he organizes regular meetings among TBAs from 13 surrounding communities to share ideas on their work at their level and discuss pertinent issues relating to their work.

He also expressed the concern that the women who were delivered do not pay anything, and urged the husbands to support the TBAs for the efforts they make.

There is no doubt age is telling on Papa Dogo and Nayina who are appealing for the training of more TBAs to support and gradually take over from them, when they are no longer there.