For a Healthier and Brighter future. As a team, we will!
An Impact story from Bihar
When it comes to collaborating, and working together in sync, we always have to understand the level of communication, understanding, and the push for a focused goal. Somewhere down the line, different sets of people with varied upbringing and diverse value systems with their knowledge, patience, and perseverance play an important role. This was what saved the lives of twin babies of a Mother, who is 26 years old within a remote village called Jorja situated in Darbhanga district in Bihar. This mother when the ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) visits the home for health services still holds her hands and says.
“The lives of my children were saved by Almighty himself and efforts from you (health workers) all who stood by and supported us like a family.”
The ASHA narrates these events with which she accompanied by others on how they together have helped this mother to inspire the community and to motivate her colleagues in this cadre and supervisors to help them envision a future, a bright one for the health services in the sub-district.
The events unfolded when the pregnant mother who was in true labour pains was accompanied by the ASHA and she had to be rushed to the nearest delivery point, which was a health sub-centre Jorja, in her village (Most primary level health facility) where the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife had seen that the mother who was very pale and malnourished and was worried about the health. She had also in mind that if any complication arises it will be difficult to manage in her level of care. With the help of ASHA, she decided to go ahead but as a precaution called to PHC (Primary Health centre) Labor room for Dr Nilendra. This was done after a rigorous exercise of planning the referral plans for all the cases to higher facilities, wherein the block manager and Dr Nilendra had oriented the outreach ANMs to inform and ask for support whenever required to reduce the number of Complications arising to Mothers and babies. This push in the PHC level helped the ANM to call the Doctor and ask for the support required immediately and Dr Nilendra who was about to finish his shift at that moment received the call and deiced to go to the Health sub-centre himself, but as the site was distant in the remote areas of the block the delivery had taken place, and he found out after weighing these babies that they were very weak and was around 1100gm and 1200gm, usually babies below the weight of 1800gm are referred to Special New Born care Unit in the district.
The mother who hailed from a poor Muslim household had no one at home beside her sick mother as her husband was out of state in search of a living. In the absence of a dependable family member, she refused to take the babies to the district headquarters (where SNCU is located) which was more than 30km from the sub-district headquarters. ASHA and ANM then informed the CARE India Block manager who then visited the mother at the HSc site and along with the ASHA, ANM, Doctor and himself started counseling the mother and before the males entered the makeshift labor room the idea of Early initiation of breast feeding (Breast feeding within the hour after birth, which has therapeutic and other positive impacts for the babies and the mother), everybody tried convincing the mother to take the babies to the SNCU but after she gained strength she left for her home and the BM and ASHA decided to try saving the babies by community level approach, all they had now was belief and hope, the mother who was hopeless and worried about the babies was very helpless and from the next day the home visit and phone calls and continuous counseling by the ASHA and the BM slowly and steadily improved the confidence of the health worker and of the Mother which stated to improve the health condition and the babies gained weight which was actually a surprising event even for the doctor and the ANM, all this only through the counseling and behavior change communication which influenced the new born care practices at the household level and turned to life saving simple practices like Skin to skin care for extra warmth, hourly breast feeds to the baby and dry cord care. When the BM and ASHA narrated the incidents to the Medical Officer in charge who looks after the sub-district he was very happy with the development and congratulated the ASHA, ANM and Doctor for their situational leadership and credited the BM for his collaborative work and patience with which he dealt with people of different level. The MOIC then requested the doctor to visit the home of the Mother and ensure that the babies require any more or infection-related support, but after his visit, he informed the mother that the babies are healthy and she takes care of them in a similar way. These incidents and events have bought in faith and hope among the community in that village and neighbouring villages regarding the struggling health service system and all that was needed was a set of people in the lowest level of hierarchy to support and patiently provide the service to a needy mother and her newborn babies. For a Healthier and brighter future, we should work towards it as a team and as one system.
(DISCLAIMER: This is an Impact story to support a cause so we have refrained from using the real names for data protection)
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com. Published on March 19, 2017.
