How monsters are affecting women’s health in Afghanistan

Qaraghage is the second of the four regions in Charkent District and the farthest region, 167 Kilometre from Mazar city, with nine big villages each divided into three to four sub-villages, and two basic health centres.

There is a doctor and a midwife in each of the two health centres but few women come to the health centre for maternity care and childbirth. When I discussed it with Sharifa, a midwife in Qurban Quduq health centre (where we have just started to work with), she said that there have been just two deliveries since January 2011.
She also said that the villagers were not interested in going to health centre; they were more interested to go to Mullahs and remedy workers.

The villagers believes that it is the monsters who kill the women during childbirth and the women need to be kept at home to be protected against monsters during childbirth.

The Story of Shokrai

           I witnessed the case of Shokria from Dashti village when we were in Qaraghage for training community health workers. It was very strange for me.

Shokria, 18 years old, Iosuf Ali's wife, in her first pregnancy .  She was living just 15 minutes walk from health centre but they were not willing to go to health centre for childbirth.
She gave birth at home and was bleeding after delivery. They tried home remedies like inviting Mullahs to recite from Quran, pushing the dog to bark and burning straw to make smoke the monster go away.

But these remedies did not work and she fainted and they asked the midwife to go to their home then we sent the vehicle to bring the patient to the health centre but they rejected it.

We talked with the headman and Mullah to tell the husband to let her be transferred to the health centre. It was strange when we saw Shokria was arriving in health centre with the husband pulling her ears to protect her from monster.

            Shokria was transferred back to her home after nine hours of recovering in health centre and she had no bleeding and the husband and all her family, the grandfather and Mother was very happy and thankful for the transportation and treatments.

            The husband said “I was about to lose my wife just because of having wrong beliefs. I understood now that it is the bleeding which kills the women during childbirth, not the monsters and also our home remedies makes the situation worse we should take the women with bleeding to health centre instead of keeping at home”

From the left Iosuf Ali the husband pulling his wife's ears to protect her against monsters and Shokria the woman with bleeding after childbirth and the grandmother, on the way coming to health centre. 

Distributing Chickens to the Villagers in Charkent

We aim to improve nutrition and enable women to earn by selling eggs. They don't have any money but chickens are usually a woman's business and they get the money from eggs.

We had to follow their priority of giving first to poor, widows and disabled.Not all of these are the people we are aiming to help most, but they have all agreed to provide ten chickens each next year for other villagers and those will be mothers with young children. 

After we trained the women in Poultry Production, helped them to build chicken's houses and gave feeders and drinkers, we distributed the chickes.The Balkh Agriculture Department helped us technically. The following pictures shows when we were distributing Chickens for poors, handicaped and widows.

This picture shows the chickens distribution, from the right the chicken seller, Sayed Arif the animal specialist from Balkh Agriculture, Irrigation and Animal Husbandry department and Zahra the a woman from Shangir village. 

This picture shows a village man on the left with me on the right, receiving the chickens. His name is Adina, he is 48 years old. Adina said "I didn't think that the delivery was so dangerous for my wife, because she has had several deliveries, all at home but she died of severe bleeding after delivery in 30 minutes that we couldn't have time to find a vehicle or donkey to take her to the clinic. The baby also died after two months because there was no one to take care of him". He also said that he had no land of his own and he was working on others land to feed their children but this year he hasn't been able to harvest enough to feed his children.

The following three pictures shows when we were distributing improved food for chickens

We provided each chicken with the improved food for two month, it is the time then the chickens can eat the food found locally.  

 

Training Village Women in Poultry Production

To improve the women and children’s health by nutritious foods and to make the women somehow financially independent with a role in decision making, we are going to provide poor and handicapped women and widows in the villages with chickens.

The picture below shows the women in Poultry Production Training in Sharshar, they were trained by a trainer from Balkh Agriculture Department. The women were drawing pictures of chicken houses, the pictures of selecting proper egges for breeding and all the training was in pictures.

Since all the village women are illitatrate, so we were training them in poultry production by showing and drawing pictures and working on models.

The picture below shows a model of chicken house that the trainer we hired from Balkh Agriculture Department was showing the women how to make it.

The picture below shows when the trainer was showing village women practically how to make a proper house for chickens.

Villagers dispute over water in Shashkhana village

The pictures below shows the villagers from Yakatal, Karmaglig, Boriabaf and Shashkhana carrying sticks with themselves when they were disputing over the water in Shashkhana villages.

The four villages are getting water from the same spring. I got the head men to thumbprint an agreement to pipe the water in Shashkhana village and other villages would go there for water.  But when the piping was finished the other three villages started dispute and wanted to destroy the tank and pull out the pipes. But Khalil the assistant for the project midiated and asked both sides to sit and talk he has said “If you find that it is bad I will destroy it for you”. Ther reason for this kinds fo disputes has root in the past years of fighting which they have fought in different groups.

 

The water reached to Shashkhana village

 The villagers have access to clean drinking water and they have enough clean drinking water and the water to save apple tries from dying.

The following pictures shows the villagers were laying pipes

The picture below shows the two children were very happy because the water has reached to their village and were saying ” It was very hard for us to go on the mountain to bring the water specially in summer when the donkey was busy and we had no water for drinking sometimes for weeks. When the piping is finished we will always have access to clean drinking water”.

Another villagein severe need of water

Shahngir is the biggest village in Charkent district, with 300 families.
Only one spring in this village has not dried and this spring does not have
enough water for all the 300 families and their animals.

The weather is hot and it is Ramadon and the Mullah says not to drink any water, the thirsty boy just reached to the water and is drinking water with the bucket. He was relaxed after drinking the water and said “Our home is very far from the spring and we had no water all night”.

The above tow pictures show a man taking water in tubes. He said “I walk one and half hours to get to the water but some times when I came here there is no water and I have to wait four to five hours to get water. If it dries we have to leave our homes and move somewhere else”

The reason ,we as a health organization, are providing water, that it reduces diarrhoea and deaths of children from drinking dirty water. And it also creates much good will for co-operative work with villagers

Work on Water in Shashkhana village

Two Weeks ago I wrote about planning to provide water , now the work on piping is started and after one week it  will be finished and the villagers will have access to clean drinking water.

The above picture shows the men are building a small tank on spring to start piping

The poor villagers in Charkent received Light Units

The poor villagers in Charkent have no access to electricity and they are burning oil for lighting their homes which produces very harmful gases especially in cold winter when all the doors and windows are closed. The accumulation of the harmful gases produced by burning oils causes respiratory and eyes problems especially for children when they are studying in front of the light.

To improve the health of women and children and to improve environment for the women to work (sewing clothes, embroidering) and children to study, we provided each head of the women and men’s village groups with a Low-Cost Solar Light Unit. 

We don't give them money, but they spend a lot of time on this work when they could be growing their crops.

We also have rewarded the Safe Motherhood Groups with the sewing machines and also we are going to reward them the chickens to help them with the livelihoods.



Villagers in Shashkhan are in sever need for water

The drought has badly affected the district which completely depends on rain water.  Most of the villages in this district have run out of drinking water and are asking the government and NGOs to help them.

I have travelled to the Shashkhana village in Charkent two weeks ago with the head of Men Support Groups (we have established in the village). The villagers had a little reserve of dirty water which was not enough even for drinking.

The village’s water supply

Haider a villager in Shashkhana was saying “ Two of my children got diarrhoea and vomiting last week and we tried herbal medicine first but didn’t help then we took them to Sharshar health centre and got the medicine but now again they have diarrhoea because the water is very dirty”.

He was not the only family suffering from lack of access to clean drinking water but most of the people specially the children are suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting.

The water is a lot and clean at the start, high up in the mountain, 2 Kilometre far from village but it is absorbed and get dirty when reaches to the village.

The spring

As I am a health worker and don’t know much about the water ,so I went to the Balkh Irrigation Department, the local office of Ministry of Agriculture of Afghanistan, and asked for technical help.

The Balkh Irrigation Department agreed to help technically, and then we travelled to the villages and surveyed the springs

After surveying the spring we decided to pipe the water to the village and also to build a tank to reserve the water.

The water will not be used only for drinking and the villagers will also have enough water for their apple trees which is the only fruit in the village.

Qand Agha one of the villagers was saying “ It is three years that I have planted the 7 apple trees and two of them bore fruit and most of them will bear the fruit next year I will lose these apple trees if the water is not piped”

The above picture shows Najmodin the headman of Shashkhana village thumb-printing the contract to provide labour and materials found locally to pipe the water and build a tank

The above two pictures shows we were marking the ground to dig to build the water tank.

I have bought the pipes and send them to the village to finish the work as soon as possible because more of the children are getting diarrhoea and the apple trees are also about to be lost.  

The money I am going to spend on piping the water and building tank in Shashkhana village, are paid by Overseas Aid Commission of Guernsey.

I am very much thankful to Guernsey for paying this money to save the lives of many poor and marginalized people specially the children in my country. 

 

 

Saving Lives by Repairing the Autoclave

Last month the hospital’s maternity department asked us to provide a new autoclave to replace one which had broken down. We treated this as an SOS as the department was carrying out about ten operations and thirty deliveries a day with unsterile instruments. We located the manufacturer of the autoclave in China, but they could not provide parts. Meanwhile I located the faulty part in Mazar and found a mechanic to fit it, so saving $1,200 for a new autoclave.

The above two pictures shows the mechanic named Mr. Bashardust repairing the autoclave in Maternity Department in Mazar Hospital.

The video has been recorded in Qaraghage a remote and drought place in Charkent district Balkh province Afghanistan, with 958 families,  no running water or spring just 3 wells 30 to 40 meter deep that is why they use donkeys to get water out. The wells are located in a village which only can give enough water for 100 families, the other villagers reserves the raining water in winter for use in summer, it is only possible if there is enough raining in winter.

Qaraghage is a place where most of the life depends on raining water the life is good when there is enough raining in winter because the villagers keep enough water for themselves and for domestic animals but the life is worse not only for human but for animals when there is no enough raining in winter because the villagers can’t keep enough water for themselves and also they can’t get any harvest of agriculture.

According to the villagers they don’t remember such a drought like this in their lives and they use the water remained from the previous years and they will only have enough water for drinking for a couple of months then they have to leave their houses and move somewhere to find the water.     

Project of Decreasing Maternal and Newborns Death




Map of Balkh Province Afghanistan

 



HealthProm has a project in Charkent, one of the districts of Balkh province covering an area of 1040 Sq. km in north Afghanistan. There are six health centres. The main aim of the activities is to achieve MDG5A (Millennium Development Goal 5A, to reduce maternal deaths by ¾ by 2015, which is also the aim of the Ministry of Public Health in Afghanistan).
There are problems and obstacles on the sides of both the deliverer and receiver of the health services, so the project works with the both sides - with the villagers who receive the health services and the health workers who deliver the services. In order to improve health, village activities are being done using Participatory Methods by Safe Motherhood Groups and Men's Support Groups, which discuss their health problems to find the ways to solve them locally and in a sustainable way. The main aim of establishing women's and men's groups is to empower the village people, especially the marginalized women, to play an active role in making decisions, especially on their health issues.



The pictures shows the head of Safe Motherhood Groups making Clean Birth Kits (shown by HealthProm) to save the lives of mothers and newborns and protect them from infections



The oldest mosque in Balkh province Afghanistan,  built during the Arab invasion.