By James Adika
Expectant mothers in Homabay County have been cautioned against giving birth at home as this would encourage unnecessary prolonged labour pains and other birth related complications.
The nurse in charge of Maternity Unit in Homa bay County Referral Hospital, Mrs. Saline Okumu observed that despite a high number of pregnant mothers attending antenatal clinics in the area, only a handful deliver in hospitals.
Speaking to Talk Africa sister Okumu said most babies who are delivered after prolonged labour pains risked developing various disabilities especially cerebral palsy.
Mrs. Okumu called on nurses at government health facilities to create a friendly atmosphere while attending to expectant mothers in order to encourage them deliver at health institutions.
The nurse said that most women kept away from hospitals as a result of alleged mistreatment by midwives at the government hospital.
She said this after receiving complaints from expectant mothers who criticized hospital staff especially midwives of subjecting them to embarrassment.
The demeaning physical and verbal abuse and lack of privacy are partly to blame for the high number of pregnant women seeking to deliver under the care of traditional birth attendants.
She warned expectant mothers against going to traditional birth attendants for stomach massages because that was risky to their lives and that of the unborn babies.
Some of the techniques used by midwives when massaging the foetus were harmful to the unborn baby, a health expert said.
Saline Okumu said that the unprofessional methods used by midwives on a mother’s stomach caused premature separation of the placenta.
Early separation of the placenta causes heavy bleeding that could eventually result in the death of the mother and baby, she cautioned.
“There is this notion that mtoto amelala vibaya (the baby is not properly positioned in the uterus) and the baby is pushed left right and center by the midwives. This has adverse effects on the baby,” said the nurse in an interview in her office. “We get an average of two cases in a week, which is significant,” she said.
Early separation of the placenta, which joins the baby to the uterus, led to oxygen deprivation, causing the baby’s death, explained Sister Akumu.
The mother also bleeds heavily and could die.
When the separation happened, the nurse continued, speedy efforts by health workers using emergency drugs did not always work.
The situation is aggravated by some of the victims who visit the hospital after bleeding profusely and are anaemic such that efforts to save their lives prove futile.
The nurse advised mothers to take advantage of the free maternity programme and visit health facilities early for prenatal care. Such visits, she said, should be regular for the proper examination of the foetus’ development and help in case of complications.
Separately, Sister Akumu, though unable to give figures, said that the hospital had witnessed a rise in number of mothers since the free maternity service was rolled out
Other health workers admitted discriminating against the mothers on the basis of tribal alignment or economic capabilities.
One of the expectant mothers Mrs. Cynthia Awuor said the staff slap the mothers in an effort to “help” them, at the critical times that they think the baby may die, if they do not do as instructed to do.
