Wednesday, May 21, 2008

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.)

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