Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) Training

Traditional Birth Attendants are essentially local midwives in rural villages. Many of them have no formal medical training, but have worked their whole lives delivering babies and assisting women through difficult pregnancies and deliveries. Because the majority of our patients deliver their babies at home, the Rural Health team designed a training for the TBAs on Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT). The training was packed. More TBAs showed up each successive day.
The curriculum included the importance of universal precautions, types of perinatal ARVs, and how to monitor for signs of opportunistic infections and drug side effects.

I love these photos. Nelson, one of our clinical officers, took them on the last day of the TBA training in Madende. The women were delighted with the T-shirts and certificates that MSF gave them. (Note cheering TBAs in the background in the picture above.)

Rebecca

Rebecca works for MSF as a “flying” sexual violence reference person. She has been to MSF projects all over Africa, helping to set up or to improve the response to sexual violence in the communities where MSF works. Our project is lucky to have Rebecca's help for several weeks. She’s a gifted public speaker. One of her talks was so good that even one of our drivers asked for copies of her slides so he could remember everything she said.

Lucy and I are particularly fortunate that Rebecca is staying in the house where we live. She tells us stories about her work in Liberia, Chad, Uganda,and Eastern Europe. She's also side-splittingly funny and cooks a lovely macaroni and cheese. (Those buff arms are thanks to yoga, by the way).