My fantastic Lesotho computer was not allowing me to type my post into the posting box so I am getting resourceful and will do it right here.... So last Thursday me and another student got to experience one of life's miracles, Lesotho-style. We spent a whole morning in the Labor and Delivery room at St.Joseph's hospital in Roma and assisted a Nurse Midwife and 21 year old Basotho woman deliver a healthy, 6lb baby girl :) I have witnessed a delivery in Canada at RIH, but one in Lesotho is incredibly different. Just one Nurse Midwife (three years of general nursing training + 1 year of Midwifery training) attends the whole delivery: labor, birth and immediate post-delivery baby and mother care. This includes Polio vaccine drops and the TB vaccine injected, and measuring for baby, and any stitching or minimum clean up for mom. It does not include any kind of analgesic for the mom - no IV of anything, spinal, laughing gas....they bear the "discomfort" completely naturally and in almost complete silence. And they cope with this on their own - no kind of support system accompanies the woman in the delivery room, but they wait for her in the maternity ward where the mom and new baby spend one night. It is also the woman's responsibility to bring absolutely everything she and baby will need for the next day and night: blankets, towels, soap, clothes.... in Lesotho, if you don't bring it or cannot pay for it, you don't get it. This includes utensils for eating, medications, wound supplies, ect. The lack of money in the Lesotho is the reason for both empty wards and empty medicine and supply cabinets. If the hospital/health care system has no money, such things cannot be stocked in the hospital, so the people do not come to be treated because there is nothing to treat them with. If the people have no money, they cannot pay for even basic services like a spoon, let alone medications or supplies for their treatment, so they wont bother coming at all. This was the case on the Women's Ward last Monday - there were only four women by three times as many beds avalaible. In Canada those beds would all be full, all the time, just like our medication drawers and linen rooms. So hospital care is quite different, but I am happy to report that the under-five child clinic we were at today is always paid for by the government, although they use a harness that swings in the air for weighting those little tykes... Now the next time you want to complain about Canada's luxurious health care system...don't :)
My fantastic Lesotho computer was not allowing me to type my post into the posting box so I am getting resourceful and will do it right here....
ReplyDeleteSo last Thursday me and another student got to experience one of life's miracles, Lesotho-style. We spent a whole morning in the Labor and Delivery room at St.Joseph's hospital in Roma and assisted a Nurse Midwife and 21 year old Basotho woman deliver a healthy, 6lb baby girl :) I have witnessed a delivery in Canada at RIH, but one in Lesotho is incredibly different.
Just one Nurse Midwife (three years of general nursing training + 1 year of Midwifery training) attends the whole delivery: labor, birth and immediate post-delivery baby and mother care. This includes Polio vaccine drops and the TB vaccine injected, and measuring for baby, and any stitching or minimum clean up for mom. It does not include any kind of analgesic for the mom - no IV of anything, spinal, laughing gas....they bear the "discomfort" completely naturally and in almost complete silence. And they cope with this on their own - no kind of support system accompanies the woman in the delivery room, but they wait for her in the maternity ward where the mom and new baby spend one night. It is also the woman's responsibility to bring absolutely everything she and baby will need for the next day and night: blankets, towels, soap, clothes.... in Lesotho, if you don't bring it or cannot pay for it, you don't get it. This includes utensils for eating, medications, wound supplies, ect. The lack of money in the Lesotho is the reason for both empty wards and empty medicine and supply cabinets. If the hospital/health care system has no money, such things cannot be stocked in the hospital, so the people do not come to be treated because there is nothing to treat them with. If the people have no money, they cannot pay for even basic services like a spoon, let alone medications or supplies for their treatment, so they wont bother coming at all. This was the case on the Women's Ward last Monday - there were only four women by three times as many beds avalaible. In Canada those beds would all be full, all the time, just like our medication drawers and linen rooms.
So hospital care is quite different, but I am happy to report that the under-five child clinic we were at today is always paid for by the government, although they use a harness that swings in the air for weighting those little tykes...
Now the next time you want to complain about Canada's luxurious health care system...don't :)