African Mothers' Health Initiative

Though we have big dreams, at this point African Mothers Health Initiative (AMHI) and Chimwemwe mu'bereki (CU) are surviving hand-to-mouth. Because Bwaila is a referral hospital, women come from villages all over region to deliver there. This is our starting point. Nurses in the nursery maintain a log of all the babies who need follow-up at home, they obtain maps to their homes and then give the information to Beatrice. Since, CU has no vehicle its amazing staff of one - Mrs. Beatrice Namaleu, enrolled nurse - she travels via whatever transportation is available. A single visit commonly involves a 40 minute ride in a minibus followed by an hour long ride on the back of a bicycle.

Mrs Msumba lives in a village just on the periphery of Lilongwe and has been a traditional birth attendant for the past 30 years. She has a small clinic next to her home and there she conducts between 40 and 80 deliveries monthly, on her own.

As she was on her way to visit Mrs. Msumba a few months ago Mrs. Namaleu noticed a large group of women gathered around a neighbor’s home. Gradually she made her way to the center of their circle and there she found a toddler with severe Kwashiorkor (a disease of malnutrition, manifested by - generalized swelling, peeling skin, loss of pigment of hair, and areas of the skin which are either hyper or hypo pigmented).

This set of triplets was born in August 2008. Mrs. Namaleu was contacted by the nursery nurse to follow up due to reports that the mother was failing to provide sufficient breast milk and that the babies were failing to thrive. Since that point Mrs. Namaleu has been visiting them and providing supplementary formula.

The morning of November 13th 2008, Mrs. Namaleu phoned the village chief who told us to come and that we would find the mothers and her babies. We took a minibus to Mitundu and then a 40 minute bicycle ride to the village.

In 2006 a friend called Joanne to come see a tiny new born in his neighborhood. Her mother had delivered prematurely at home and died soon after. An aunt took her baby and was doing her best to care for the newborn, breastfeeding her along with her own infant son. When Joanne reached the home she was handed an arm full of blankets which she unraveled slowly and carefully until she finally reached their precious center, a tiny pink baby. As she examined Tala she could easily hold her in one hand with only her little legs left dangling over her palm. She weighed no more than two pounds.

The blessing of a poor family (written by Joanne). I first met Pamela when she came for a prenatal ultrasound. Her skin was stretched tightly over a shockingly large pregnant belly and through the window of the ultrasound, I saw four babies snuggled in close.

Pamela delivered the following morning and returned home within two weeks, bringing the quadruplets to meet their siblings: two-year old twins, a four year-old, a six year-old, and an eight-year old. Pamela lives with her husband and children in a two room mud brick home. She cares for the children and he supports them to the best of his ability with his meager income as a house-painter.

David lives with his grandmother. He is 11 months old. His mother was diagnosed with post-partum psychosis and shortly after his birth she was institutionalized. Within a few weeks the mental hospital contacted the family to report her sudden death.

In February 2006 a distressed woman in labor traveled forty kilometers alone to the hospital - walking, then on the back of a bicycle and then in a minibus. Soon after reaching the hospital her daughter - a healthy girl, her fourth child - was born, and moments later she died.

Chikumbutso was left to the care of her father and maternal relatives. Before Chiku was discharged from the hospital I met her grandmother and father, nurses taught them how to safely prepare formula for their baby and I made plans to visit Chiku and her family in their village.