Traditional Birth Attendants in Remote Toko Health Area Receive Training

With funds from Global Pearls, USA, Rescue Women - Cameroon was able to mobilize Medical officials to offer training to Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in 8 villages in Toko Health Area. These TBAs have over the years been delivering women based on traditional knowledge handed down to them from their mothers and grand mothers. The one day training, that brought together 8 TBAs from 8 different villages was designed to train the TBAs on proper delivery procedures, techniques and the importance of referral systems. The TBAs revealed that they have been doing deliveries the wrong way for so many years. Some of the things they said were:

- They do deliveries without putting on protective gloves; they do it with bare hands
- They use old blades or kitchen knives to cut of the baby's umbilical cord
- They beat up women whose babies come with their legs during deliveries because they believe the women are witches
- The bathe babies who come out without crying with very cold water, or they warm the babies up using fuel wood fire
- More

Toko Health Sub division in general, made of 49 villages is remote area with roads, no electricity, no running water, no telephone network, no radio or tv signal. The villages are mostly connected by impassable earth roads or footpaths.

The training of TBAs programme which is a one year programme will witness an impact assessment by Rescue Women - Cameroon to determine progress made by TBAs in delivery and curbing maternal and infant mortality.