by Fred Chela, Zambia, November 1997
THEME = HEALTH
Traditional healing methods are not
always effective for new born babies,
yet what can the mothers do in these rural areas when these
healing methods fail?
Rose Sikwambila is a mother of five, including a new set of twins. She remembers a little "ceremony" she used to perform whenever she gave birth. When her baby was just a few days old, she got mud from under her grass-roofed maize granary, mixed it with salt and dutifully applied it on the baby's umbilical cord. She was always satisfied that the mud would act as an antiseptic, drying up the cord fast enough, and quickening her new baby's development.
Rose and other mothers like her, lacked basic information on health and hygiene, and dutifully held to traditional practices like this "mud therapy", with such fervour, that they were prepared to transfer such knowledge to their offspring.
But the "local medicine" didn't always work. Most babies developed temperatures and began to convulse. The mothers were worried especially when other women said: "Lusinga wa kufwa", meaning, "the disease will kill the baby". The mothers soon found what they took to be an antidote. They performed a small operation, which was very painful for babies. They dug up some roots, burnt them and used a razor to cut little tattoo marks from the babies' nape, down along the spinal cord to the scrotum, on which they applied the sooty root powder. Three or four people had to hold each little baby down during the tattooing. But this "local medicine" only abated the condition for a short time. The babies' convulsions didn't completely disappear and became even more violent - some died.
People in the village began to say that there was a curse on the village. They thought that their babies had been bewitched. Some mothers went into the bush and took leaves from the Mutendere and Lukubilo trees found in the valley. They made an infusion from the leaves and administered this orally to their children. Others consulted witch doctors. All to no avail.
Then one day, some mothers, desperate to help their babies, walked 20km to the Munyumbwe Rural Health centre, where a nurse told them that the cause of the convulsion was infection from all the traditional treatment they had been giving their babies. But Tetanus can be cured and most certainly can be prevented.
World Vision has been running a child immunisation project in the Gwembe Valley for the past seven years. It has worked in conjunction with government nurses to increase immunization coverage, and educate mothers on the prevention of child killer diseases such as whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria, polio and tuberculosis.
The project, now being sponsored by USAID, caters for a population of 140,000 scattered throughout the valley. For many mothers like Rose, the presence of the child survival team, is the difference between life and death for them and their children.
The community at Hakarembwe still does not have a clinic, school or church, but they have now constructed a health delivery point within the village and appointed a community health worker, trained by World Vision, to attend to minor ailments. This is a great step for the rural population. Instead of going miles to seek treatment and counsel, they can now rely on the community health worker (with the back-up of the World Vision team), to treat them and monitor their children's growth, right in their own backyards!
Sitting outside the new grass-roofed health delivery point, Rose looks at her new twins sucking at her breasts. She has renewed hope for the future. "I want my children to be educated", she says.
Perhaps with the services of the World Vision child survival team, her hopes for her children will become a reality.
END
PeaceLink 1998 - Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgement