UNLEASHing mothers with antenatal care to save them
When I returned home, everyone kept on asking me about UNLEASH and Denmark and I couldn’t explain. I mean, I could articulate “awesome, incredible” and describe more or less the stops and challenges I went through. And it all felt so little compared to my memories. So I can’t explain UNLEASH for you, I can only say “try it”. Give it a try. And maybe you will meet some of the most passionate, inspiring and cool people ever. To feel electrified by their energy and drive, broaden your mind and horizons in a way that makes going back to your life and job feel strange and unresting. I went back to my old life and my mind wandered off to all the knowledge I’ve gathered, and these days when I’m not working, I’m studying. I learnt so much on how to make a better world possible that just standing still and continue as I was, without aiming for it, is impossible. Can’t do!
I worked under the theme “Mothers and families” and we brainstormed on how to save mothers from horrible painful deaths and on how to empower girls and let them have the knowledge and control over the decisions concerning their bodies and sexualities. The rest of the days, I focused on why women wouldn’t attend antenatal care at healthcare facilities, even when quality ones were available. Antenatal care is the vital moment to engage with these women and prevent a lot of possible complications during pregnancy, as well as establishing the pivotal importance of delivery with skilled attendance to stop maternal mortality. We focused on repetitive stories we heard from our African colleagues in which in certain communities in Sub-saharan Africa women suffered pressure within their families and communities to not engage with these facilities. “This isn’t our way of doing things” and “girl X came and never returned”. How does one break a cycle of misinformation and mistrust to change traditional roles and rules inside a community? We really struggled to find solutions and ended up coming across some pilot experiments in a few areas in Africa where financial incentives are linked to the compromise of deliveries with skilled attendance at healthcare facilities. This made us think that maybe instead of just linking them to deliveries, we could use financial incentives and advices, with the help of creating local agency bankings to engage women in slum areas with quality antenatal care, with a minimum of four consultations, and deliveries, breaking the cycle of mistrust.
Breaking conceptions and behaviours in places with such a strong sense of identity isn’t easy, but we truly believe slowly and with successful stories from their neighbours, friends or sisters our idea can change the thoughts of the next generation of mothers and help to save them!
