24 images Created 5 May 2017
KENYA MATERNAL HEALTH
I had recently given birth when I had the opportunity to document maternal medical care in the Masai tribes of Kenya. I saw the universal in our experiences. The setting was different, but there was the same camraderie among women, the same striving among medical workers for the well-being of mothers and children. It became a very personal subject.
I tried to show that while childbirth is one of the world’s most common events, it can be deeply treacherous depending on where you are born. In London, where I gave birth, the doctors had fetal heart monitors and IV drips and surgical rooms readied for any emergency. In the Masai Mara, most women give birth at home in remote villages with the help of local midwives. When complications occur, it can take hours - or days - to reach the nearest hospital, where conditions and equipment are often spartan.
Many women deliver on their way to the hospital. Like Susan Nani, a woman I photographed whose baby daughter was born on a roadside, and who faced significant post-birth complications. Nani was eventually picked up by a motorbike from an anti-poaching unit that carried her over rutted roads to a clinic.
Across rural Kenya, tradition says women should deliver at home. It’s how it’s always been done here, with village midwives who know so much about birthing babies. But centuries of knowledge cannot overcome the dangers of a home birth in tiny mud-walled hut.
There is, of course, no “normal” pregnancy. Talk to any group of mums: We all have our war stories: the miscarriages, the induced deliveries, the complications followed by cesareans, the breastfeeding woes and the not-much-spoken-about post partum depression. Or perhaps you know a baby who was born prematurely and spent its first few weeks in an incubator.
In towns like mine, and probably like yours, these stories often end happily. The surgeon rushes in to stop the bleeding, the neo-natal doctors save the tiny premature newborn. The problems are often not very different in rural Kenya. The difference is that in places like Sitoka, the babies often die. And sometimes, so do the mothers.
One afternoon, in the town of Isiolo, I watched a young woman named Salome deliver her first baby, a 3-kilogram boy coming out in a slippery rush at a very basic green-walled delivery room, with sheets for privacy and two simple beds. A couple of nurses attended handled the delivery.
it was dramatically better than what Salome would have had at home. Kenya now offers free hospital births across the country, but many women don’t know that, and many men don’t want to pay for the transportation to get their wives to towns with hospitals.
One thing I learned: These Maasai women are tough. Within minutes of giving birth, Salome had hopped off the delivery bed and walked to nearby cubicle where a nurse brought her son to her to breastfeed him.
I wish I could claim to have been so tough when my boys were born.
I tried to show that while childbirth is one of the world’s most common events, it can be deeply treacherous depending on where you are born. In London, where I gave birth, the doctors had fetal heart monitors and IV drips and surgical rooms readied for any emergency. In the Masai Mara, most women give birth at home in remote villages with the help of local midwives. When complications occur, it can take hours - or days - to reach the nearest hospital, where conditions and equipment are often spartan.
Many women deliver on their way to the hospital. Like Susan Nani, a woman I photographed whose baby daughter was born on a roadside, and who faced significant post-birth complications. Nani was eventually picked up by a motorbike from an anti-poaching unit that carried her over rutted roads to a clinic.
Across rural Kenya, tradition says women should deliver at home. It’s how it’s always been done here, with village midwives who know so much about birthing babies. But centuries of knowledge cannot overcome the dangers of a home birth in tiny mud-walled hut.
There is, of course, no “normal” pregnancy. Talk to any group of mums: We all have our war stories: the miscarriages, the induced deliveries, the complications followed by cesareans, the breastfeeding woes and the not-much-spoken-about post partum depression. Or perhaps you know a baby who was born prematurely and spent its first few weeks in an incubator.
In towns like mine, and probably like yours, these stories often end happily. The surgeon rushes in to stop the bleeding, the neo-natal doctors save the tiny premature newborn. The problems are often not very different in rural Kenya. The difference is that in places like Sitoka, the babies often die. And sometimes, so do the mothers.
One afternoon, in the town of Isiolo, I watched a young woman named Salome deliver her first baby, a 3-kilogram boy coming out in a slippery rush at a very basic green-walled delivery room, with sheets for privacy and two simple beds. A couple of nurses attended handled the delivery.
it was dramatically better than what Salome would have had at home. Kenya now offers free hospital births across the country, but many women don’t know that, and many men don’t want to pay for the transportation to get their wives to towns with hospitals.
One thing I learned: These Maasai women are tough. Within minutes of giving birth, Salome had hopped off the delivery bed and walked to nearby cubicle where a nurse brought her son to her to breastfeed him.
I wish I could claim to have been so tough when my boys were born.
