With a headquarters in Nairobi and over 90% of it’s staff from Africa, AMREF is a truly African organization. Their vision is to see lasting health change in Africa, where good-quality, affordable health care is accessible to all. Our hero’s season continues as AMREF tell us about one of their heroes Midwife, Esther Madudu and why they are nominating her for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Esther Madudu is a midwife. She has been fighting to help women during pregnancy or while giving birth in her community in rural Uganda. Esther attends to three or four delivering mothers each day. She calls them blessings.
I am privileged to see a life join this earth every other day, although my heart breaks to watch mothers go through such agonising pain. Not so much the agony of giving birth but the agony of giving birth under very harsh conditions. There are days I have to run long distances to meet mothers who cannot make it to the health centre, only to find they have already delivered. We have a high mortality rate in Uganda as many women cannot afford to go to hospital.
Although she lives with her family at the Atirir health centre staff quarters, Esther spends more than 13 hours every day at the health centre.
I am always here, I only get the day off occasionally. Deliveries are unexpected and I have to rush whenever and wherever I am needed. I deliver up to five babies a night but my job goes beyond deliveries. I help to educate women with proper healthcare information and campaign for for maternal health to be prioritised. We are all alive today because someone gave birth to us…how can we not make that a priority in health care?
The mothers in my community believe in me and I do the job because I believe in it passionately. I was born premature, but with a skilled traditional birthing attendant. Because I only weighed 2 lbs my family were doubtful about my chances of survival and some people suggested that they should give up on me. It’s thanks to the skills, hard work and determination of the birthing attendant, who fought for my life, that I’m here today.
Esther was trained by the African Medical and Research Foundation, AMREF. This year AMREF has launched a campaign to train more African health heroes like Esther to become midwives to tackle the extremely high maternal death rate in sub-Saharan Africa.
At the moment 200,000 women die in childbirth or pregnancy in the region every year. AMREF’s Stand Up for African Mothers campaign aims to train 15,000 midwives by 2015, reducing maternal death rates in sub-Saharan by 25%. As part of the campaign AMREF has nominated Esther for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize- as a representative of all the African midwives fighting to save the lives of African mothers. Check out the campaign at amrefuk.org and sign the petition for Esther’s nomination!
