Effective Service Delivery: Accompaniment

For those of you who have heard of Paul Farmer, you can probably imagine him trudging for miles to visit patients in their homes in rural Haiti or any of the other countries PIH is working in. Paul is famous for making this effort, an effort in which he…

Maternal Health’s 1%

I was invited back to St Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital earlier this week, where I delivered both of my children, for a screening of No Woman, No Cry.
Dr. Jacques Moritz, Director, Gynecology Division, Department of OB/GYN there, hosted the event, who just also happens to be the OB who backed my…

Happy Birthday to Me (and My Mom)

Forty-three years ago my mother went into labor for the second time. It was either very late New Year’s Day or very early on the second day of 1969 depending on how you looked at it but either way- it was a full week past her due date when my mom woke up knowing it was…

Tales from the Field: Sanur

Below is an email I recently received from my friend, midwife Ibu Robin Lim, in Indonesia. When I visited Bali last fall, Robin took me to a slum where many of the women and children she cares for reside. Below is a recap of a night she recenly spent there helping a mother…

Thank You for Supporting EMC in the Mozilla Firefox Challenge on Crowdrise

Dear Friends,

Thank you SO much for supporting us in the Mozilla Firefox Challenge on Crowdrise. With your contributions, we were able to raise $17,062 for Robin Lim’s Bumi Sehat Clinic in Bali…

Tales From the Field — Part 3

I arrive on the floor in a daze. There is a woman seizing. Two midwives hold her down as the new young OB prepares to suction her. I am instantly awake.

“How’s her cervix?” I ask.

Every Mother is a Mother (Chak Manman Se Yon Manman)

We arrived after lunchtime into Cap-Haitien International Airport, leaving behind a rainy cold day in the northeast. From the air, Port-au-Prince resembles many of the neighboring islands in the Caribbean, with clear blue coastal waters…