What the Women’s Health Pavilion Will Mean for Care

By Dziwe Ntaba, M.D.

A lot has changed since we opened the doors at Village Health Works. As we look ahead to 2012 and the construction of our state-of-the-art Women’s Health Pavilion, the story of the baby in this photo has been on my mind. 

“Samantha” was born at our clinic and is lucky to be alive after a hair-raising delivery. Her mother had been in prolonged labor at home with the help of traditional birth attendants that have no access to formal training or obstetric supplies. When her water broke, she was exposed to an unsterile technique that led to contamination and infection. 

After close to 36 hours of stalled labor and fetal distress, the young mother was brought to our clinic by one of our village health workers. When her baby was finally delivered, she came out with a frightening blue coloration, and without breathing or any movement. We had no advanced life support equipment or medications whatsoever, but I was able to use a syringe and IV catheter to suction out her airway before starting CPR. Having no incubator, we had to make due with rapid sequential application of pre-warmed bed-sheets, which we prepared using a coal heated iron.

Samantha slowly started to breathe, turned a healthy pinkish color and then let out a faint but miraculous cry. We kept at the makeshift warming measures for another couple of hours as her breathing normalized and she gained good muscle tone. Mother and child were hospitalized for close observation and a course of IV antibiotics to treat infection. Family members and neighbors came to visit, and the joy (and bewilderment) on their faces was just priceless—the entire village now understands the importance of having skilled attendants facilitate delivery. Stories like these have resulted in surging enrollment in our pre-natal care program. 

We have been unable to deliver babies routinely at Village Health Works due to a lack of physical space and other requisite infrastructure. But the construction of the Women’s Health Pavilion in 2012 will change that. This facility will not only provide a safe and dignified environment in which mothers can deliver their babies, it will also modernize and expand our maternal-child health services and markedly reduce preventable deaths and disability amongst the patients we serve.

Dziwe was VHW’s first Medical Director. He currently serves as Senior Advisor to VHW, practices emergency medicine in New York City and is a visiting physician in Kigutu.