NGO Advocates Special Training For Birth Attendants

A Non-Governmental Organisation, the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood has called for a special training for Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in the country.

Speaking in a telephone programme organised by the Silverbird Communications over the weekend in Port Harcourt, Chairperson of the body, Mrs. Gloria Boma Harry, argued that it would help reduce maternal and child mortality.

She hinted that the body has begun canvassing for a bill in the State House of Assembly that would legally empower traditional midwives to conduct child delivery.

Mrs. Harry argued that if TBAs are phased out as planned by medical authorities, the problem of maternal and child mortality would persist because at the local level, the traditional midwives enjoy high patronage.

Once this gap is closed, the White Ribbon Alliance Chairperson, opined that maternal mortality rate would be reduced to the barest minimum, as she insisted that traditional midwives have a great role to play in better medical health delivery at the rural areas.

Mrs. Harry further called for the establishment of a Community Birth Attendants body that would be trained and certified by the government as a way to control their activities.

In the same vein, a prominent traditional midwife in Port Harcourt, Madam Margaret Stephens, has dismissed claims made by some medical experts that TBAs are responsible for the swelling birth complications often leading to maternal and infant deaths.

Madam Stephen stated that in her 40 years of practice as a traditional birth attendant she has never recorded any death and always refers complicated conditions to hospitals.

Apart from providing ante-natal care for women, she disclosed that she gives massaging treatment for her patients free of charge, stressing that the massaging helps women to deliver safely.

The traditional midwife called on government to harness the local expertise of TBAs in order to tackle the menace of maternal and child mortality in the country.