The HeartString: Counting where it matters for Maternal Health
by The Daily Eye Team October 16 2014, 4:32 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 51 secsThis is a guest post by Rachel Zaslow, executive director of Mother Health International, a partner of Segal Family Foundation. Imagine it is pouring rain. You are deep in a village, it is nighttime with no electricity, no phone, and you are miles from a road. These are often the circumstances when A to Rose, a traditional midwife in Northern Uganda, attends a birth. A to remember one birth where after the mother labored for many hours, she began to bleed. Fearing it would get worse, A to send neighbors to the nearest road to seek help. Hours went by and A to became increasingly worried. She had no way to know if the baby was alive, if the bleeding was serious, or if the mother would make it to a hospital before catastrophe. A too has been attending births for what she estimates to be 32 years, but she has never received an education. She has not attended grade school and she cannot read, write or count.