With few resources, midwives in Haiti try to curb the number of maternal and infant deaths

PERSPECTIVE | ‘I did not know how to help them’

Michelle and the baby she delivered, Claybe. (Monique Jaques for Every Mother Counts)

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post Wendy Galietta.

Haiti has the highest infant mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere, and the country has just one midwife for every 50,000 people, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

At St. Therese Hospital in Hinche, Haiti, midwives struggle to save the lives of women and babies.

“I saw a lot of women who died during delivery, but I did not know how to help them,” midwife Juslene Regulus says between rounds one afternoon at St. Therese.

The maternity ward at St. Therese doesn’t have running water, and waste is collected in buckets. When the electricity cuts out, as it does throughout the day, the midwives put on headlamps and keep on delivering babies. Nurses use antibacterial gel sparingly, since they don’t know when the next shipment will arrive.

Left: Remy Jeslande is helped while birthing at St. Therese Hospital in Hinche, Haiti. Right: A newly delivered baby rests with its mother with help from Midwives for Haiti students at St. Therese Hospital. (Monique Jaques for Every Mother Counts)

Regulus decided to become a midwife after her cousin died while delivering a baby. She was trained through a program operated by Midwives for Haiti. With funding from Every Mother Counts, a New York-based nonprofit founded by Christy Turlington Burns, and other donors, the program is working to change the statistics by training skilled birth attendants. Having skilled care at birth is considered the most important intervention to make childbirth safe.

Sources:: United Nations Population Fund and Countdown to 2030.

Midwives for Haiti, which has six Haitian teachers and help from visiting volunteers, has trained 124 birth attendants; another 32 students are in a year-long class that will graduate in 2018. Students are taught at St. Therese, as well as at mobile clinics.

Left: The Midwives for Haiti mobile clinic visits require a river crossing outside of Hinche. Right: The mobile clinic visits the remote town of Roy Sec, outside of Belladere, Haiti, for checkups and prenatal visits. (Monique Jaques for Every Mother Counts)

One student, Sheila Pasquet, is from Cabestor, a remote community where the maternal mortality ratio is roughly three times the national average and where about 1 in 5 children don’t make it to their fifth birthday.

Left: Every Mother Counts midwife, Michelle, and her co-worker, Junior, visit Marcenat Dady, 22, and her new son, Claybe, at home in Cabestor, Haiti. Right: Michelle and her co-worker, Junior, visit Marcenat and son, Claybe, at home near the Cabestor Birth Center in Cabestor, Haiti. (Monique Jaques for Every Mother Counts)

Mortality began to decrease there, Pasquet says, after a clinic opened in the community. Before it opened, women seeking a skilled birth attendant would have to walk up to four hours and cross 20 rivers and streams to reach the nearest hospital.

Left: A nurse, with the assistance of Midwives for Haiti students, conducts a postnatal visit with Mimose Marcelin who has four children and had a C-section in St. Therese Hospital. Right: A nurse, with the assistance of Midwives for Haiti students, conducts a postnatal visit with Mimose Marceli. (Monique Jaques for Every Mother Counts)