Given time, energy and human ingenuity, there is nothing impossible. Success certainly stations at your threshold. Grab it! Man, unlike other creatures, is filled with desire and ambitions to acquire something in his lifetime. He always aspires to own things that he thinks are missing in his life. Primarily, his basic needs that sustain him are accorded a top priority among many others. He knows and for sure that his existence is at stake without them. No compromise regarding issues related to what one eats, wears and a shelter where he lives.
These have to be fulfilled as long as man continues to exist. The expression alive and kicking becomes meaningful only if he manages to access them without restraints of any sort. If man cannot meet or attain such life necessities; he is considered a creature no better than an animal. Even animals do not live just like that; they are guided by behavior to meet the requirements their instinct demands.
Things that man depends on for his survival do not come free of charge. After all, there is no free lunch as Americans put it. One has to set out at dawn of his life in search of the basic needs until dusk, the end of the day. It has to be urgent and should be obtained without delay.
Their search cannot be procrastinated since hunger does not allow procrastination under any circumstance; otherwise, through malnutrition which is caused by lack of the necessary nutrition, it wages a war of physical deterioration and ushers in diseases as the resistance of the body gets weakened. At an interval of every three to four hours, human body demands food. The energy that is fueled by breakfast, calls for refueling during lunchtime and so does it at supper; these activities continue non-stop, day-in and day-out throughout man’s existence.
To cope with such unavoidable life demands, it takes a hard work on the part of the individual to attain the necessary basic needs for one to stay alive. Searching for a job or the means to earn a living is inevitable unless one’s dignity is disregarded only to resort to beggary or thievery as options which no sane person, under any circumstance, favors. Obviously, a healthy and strong person discharges his duty. He prides himself on self-sufficiency and mental capacity that any reliable individual should have. This notion goes far beyond bread and butter concerns; it becomes the issue of proving one’s valor to face the oddities of life.
In the lowlands of Ethiopia, particularly in Afar region, ignorance, regarding mother and child health, adversely affects the Afar women. According to the Health Sector Development Program HSDP-IV report, the current coverage of health care provision in this region is in the proximity of 39%.
The gap of the delivery rate in health facilities between Afar and Addis Ababa is in the range of between 6 to 87 % respectively. To help narrow such a big gulf, measures need to be taken as early as possible. Thus, improving the health conditions of mothers and newborn babies is among the top priorities of HSDP in Ethiopia.
Lack of awareness of the importance of health and education continually claims the life of tens of hundreds of mothers and children. Still birth, high infants and mothers’ mortality rate during delivery and lack of the required immunization and malnutrition are among the major causes.
The argument in this case takes us to a certain brave woman who fought her way out of impossibilities all forms in the Afar region. A thirty year old Momina Mohammed is one of the women who have made significant changes in their personal life and that of their families’ health conditions.
By the donation obtained from Bread for the World (BfdW), Friendship Support Association (FSA), a local NGO, intervened by conducting Mother & Child Health (MCH) through Health Education for Afar Lives Project. And as a result, by implementing the knowledge gained from the program of FSA, the Afar women and children have shown an improved health condition in a short time.
Thus, behavioral change is seen vividly in Momina, a pregnant pastoralist mother of four. She is a community conversation participant at Jega village. Her participation is not because she was attracted by pecuniary benefit she would get from the NGO but to liberate herself and fellow mothers from the prevalent mother-child death.
Momina Mohammed, being one of the women who have made great efforts in changing their own families’ life-style and health condition, contributed a lot by leading an exemplary life that attracted many other women to the education program.
This brave woman lives in Dulessa district at Burteli Kebele with her husband and 4 children. In Afar Region it is extremely difficult for women to get the consent of their husbands to participate in any program that takes them away from home. The brevity and tactfulness of Momina eventually won her husband and his friends to her side.
FSA uses qualified promoters to train pastoralist mothers on the basics of health education such as growth and development of the baby, danger signs during pregnancy, safe delivery, immunization, breast feeding etc.
After continually participating in the program, the extraordinary woman, Momina says, “I’m sufficiently equipped with the knowledge of mother and child health that focuses on prenatal, antenatal and safe delivery. Previously, I had no anti-natal follow up and I had given birth to my 4 children at home with the assistance of Traditional Birth Attendants with extremely great difficulty. In fact, once I was almost to die due to certain complication which the attendants could not figure out.”
“Previously, I had not even anticipated the adverse consequences of delivering at home without medical assistants and any medical facilities. By sheer chance, Allah helped me and I delivered my four children in spite of grave consequences that could have happened. It was a near-death experience. But such situation is not always possible. The intervention of medical care is of an utmost necessity and goes without saying.”
Currently, Momina is six-month pregnant and owing to her training with the CC, she has realized the importance of pre-natal clinical visits. She reflects, “I promise myself and fellow mothers that I will continue the follow up program every month and give birth at the health center. Hereafter, I don’t risk my life like I did in the past. As my citizenship obligation, I’ll encourage the women in my neighborhood to follow suit. And a lot of women have already shown interest. This is going to be my fifth delivery; the baby needs to have safe delivered with the assistance of the health care providers.”
The promoters, while training the CC participants, reiterated to Momina that as a woman has more babies, her womb gets weaker and at the same time she risks heavy bleeding after delivery. So having realized the consequences, Momina said, “It’s better and safer to deliver at the health institution in case this kind of problem occurs.”
She convinced her husband, Endris, to give her his full consent to join the training program and gradually he fully understood the importance of the health education. Endris, on his part, took the initiative to rally many of his friends’ wives behind Momina. Furthermore, he motivated her to continue her participation in the program for the sake of the well-being of their family and the community at large. He, with some of his friends, often accompanies her to the health center voluntarily. This has been quite an encouragement to the medical workers.
In the face of the strong opposition of husbands in the Afar region to allow their wives to do what they think is contrary to the norm of the community, Momina’s resilience to overcome such insurmountable problem proves nothing other than her heroic act in saving the lives of mothers and children in her community and even beyond. She made her way through the utterly difficult route. She succeeded in doing what she determined to do; she gained her purpose; she achieved what she aimed at and set an example for others to follow suite.
At last, because of Momina’s commendable acts, many mothers, in spite of the condemnation of their husbands, have shown interest to gain the behavioral change through training, the sole desire of FSA. Thus, out of 1,800 CC participants, 502 pregnant women have used the services at the health centers out of which 166 pregnant women chose institutional delivery service. In addition, out of 1,049 babies, 953 of them were immunized; this is a number that had never been anticipated before the program was introduced to the region in 2017.
Momina concludes, “Currently, I am in a good health condition; I would like to thank FSA for conducting this health education program in our village. I promise I will transfer what I’ve learned to other women in and outside my neighborhood.” Currently, Momina is looked up to like a light tower for the navigators in turbulent sea.
Women in her neighborhood owe her a lot for she had pulled them out of the negative attitude of not willing to participate in health training programs. She believes that the elders, sooner or later, will take the initiative to mobilize the community to support this blessed service of FSA.
Bravo Momina! Keep up your extraordinary and life-saving good work. Bravo!!!
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 29 September 2019
BY JOSEPH SOBOKA
