TRADITIONAL BIRTH ATTENDANTS AS LINK CARE PROVIDERS

TRADITIONAL BIRTH ATTENDANTS AS LINK CARE PROVIDERS

Obliterating Traditional Birth Attendants from the health care system is imbibing a textbook policy that will have a deleterious impact on rural maternal and child health. In the bid to attain and achieve MDG 4 and 5 all hands must be on deck.

Rather than attempting the impossible, conflicting human right concepts and utilizing unethical principles by stopping TBAs, Maternal and Child Aid Cameroon believes empowering the capacity base of TBAs (contrary to opponents of their practice) will edge us away from the maternal and child health mortality cliff.

Recognizing that the Cameroon government has not and shows no immediate interest in paying much attention to the role of traditional Birth Attendants (rather they are focused on their unhealthy practices), Maternal and Child Aid Cameroon believes that forming associations of TBAs in various localities will create a regulatory framework for monitoring their activities, a simpler route to building their capacities and reaching the inaccessible arenas of the primary health care system.

Maternal and Child Aid Cameroon seeks partners and competent personnel in building a policy that enhances the activity of TBAs and also integrate them into modern health care systems.

Maternal and Child Aid Cameroon is making study plan of brandishing TBAs as “Link Care Providers”. This of course will involve the opinions and tutored consent of these TBAs.

The objectives of the project include:

11. To explore TBAs perceptions of the advantages of TBA care and skilled care.

22. To determine TBAs perspective on “service conditions” in homes where they assist births and how “enabling environment” could be improved.

33. To investigate current practice of TBAs in treating or referring when complications occur.

44. To determine TBA perspective on reasons behind household and community level delays in seeking skilled care for normal births and in obstetric emergencies, and on provider/facility factors influencing timely receipt of quality obstetric care; their perception of facility/provider barriers, motivators, willingness of providers to change.

55. To determine TBAs awareness of the need for and content of early postpartum care (at 1 and 2 weeks following birth); when and what TBAs do now during first week after birth; get ideas on how early postpartum care coverage (both in-home and by a skilled provider in facility) could be increased.

66. To explore the concept of TBAs as link care providers; motivations, constraints, consequences and to determine whether TBAs believe repositioning them as “links to skilled care” and support providers is acceptable/feasible to TBAs and women and families; explore in-depth perceived barriers, motivators, enabling factors.

77. To understand the TBA perspective on who comprises their own social networks; the social networks of locality; social networks of elder female family influentials: social networks of husbands/community leaders and influentials, and how these social networks might be best used to rapidly spread information about improved obstetric care practices.