East Africa: Caravan on Maternal Health launched

ABANTU for Development in collaboration with the United Nations Millennium Campaign- Africa Regional Office, FEMNET and other partners, launched the East African Caravan on Maternal Health in one of Kenya’s biggest slum, Kibera. The launch welcomed the attendance of rural women and men, school boys and girls, UN representatives, Ambassadors, medical doctors and other dignitaries.

Among the guests was the Kenyans Minister for Public Health and Sanitation’s representative who spread the message that every woman had a right to health and life adding that cases of maternal deaths were preventable if only gender concerns were put in the front line. She urged women to attend at least four ante-natal and post-natal visits in order to avoid complication and mortality during pregnancy.

United Nations Development Programme Resident Coordinator Mr. Aeneas Chuma was optimistic of a breakthrough strategy for Africa to achieve MDG goals in promoting awareness through the policy makers who signed the Millennium Declaration 10 years ago. He ended his speech with the message that “in this day and age, no woman should be dying while giving life” which coincided with the theme of the East African Caravan.

Messages were delivered in the form of testimonies, songs entitles “Bring Mummy home!” and performances by rural woman urging our policymakers to act vigilantly and immediately.

The testimonies from women shared some of the real life experiences in the rural and urban areas. One woman spoke of situations where a pregnant woman in the rural areas is required to go to the clinic fully equipped with a medical kit that costs $5 and this woman’s income is less than $1 every two weeks. This story left the audience in tears and, made us all aware of the importance of alerting our policymakers on the urgency to improve maternal health care in among our rural areas. While a testimony from a woman in the urban areas delivered the message of hope due to the availability of hospitals like the Nairobi Women’s Hospital. This portrayed the great gap between medical services in rural and urban areas. A sad but true fact that wealth plays a big part in health.

Women and child received free medical services with the distribution contraceptives for the women and de-wormers for the children. The long line outside the medical tent can be seen as a sign of hope that today, the East African Caravan raised awareness on maternal health among rural communities.

The launch concluded with the East African Caravan being flagged off to continue the journey and spread the message that every woman’s life is important.