40-day-old Muhammad was carried by his cousin to the Mother and Child Healthcare Centre for check up
According to UNICEF, neonatal mortality rate stands at 46 deaths per 1,000 births, and 81 in every 1,000 children do not live past their 5th birthday in Pakistan. 178 of every 100,000 pregnant mothers die during or after delivery. These numbers tell us that surviving and living healthily is a challenge to Pakistani children and mothers.
Our partner worker carried a 12-week-old embryo baby model to deliver the message of “priceless life” to women who were preparing for abortion in the hospital.
Abortion, a bloody noun.
According to the interpretation of Wikipedia, abortion, also known as miscarriage or induced abortion, is the ending of pregnancy by removing an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus.
Under the influence of one child policy, millions of women and mothers undergo abortion or sterilisation every year. The Chinese official report pointed out 13 million cases of abortion annually. When this announcement was still hovering around the ears, some US human rights organisations already felt unacceptable and claimed that the actual number is 10 million more. According to this data, there are 63,013 cases of abortion every day, 2,625 cases every hour, and 43 cases every minute. Various reasons have gradually made abortion a “reasonable” choice and it is silently accepted in the society, which can be implied from an advertisement of a mainland Chinese hospital. In the advertisement, a woman was frustrated because of an unplanned pregnancy. After the hospital’s painless induced abortion, the family and even the grandmother were very happy to welcome her home. Various social influences resulted in sexual experience at young age and the prevalence of abortion.
About 1.8 million people in Delhi live in slums. Most of them used to live in villages and rural areas and migrated to the metropolis seeking for a better life. Yet, the slums are overcrowded, unhygienic and lack basic amenities. Most dwellers cannot find regular work as they do not an official identification. These realities shatter their “sweet home” dreams.
Dhading is one of the most impoverished districts in the central region of Nepal. Most of the population is ethnic groups. Nearly 40% of its population lives in very poor and marginalized situation. They are mainly subsistence farmers, surviving by scanty means. There is poor sanitation with over 60% of the population in the district has no access to clean drinking water and very few villagers have toilets. Due to lack of basic health and hygiene knowledge and availability of medical services, child mortality rate is more than 10%. Villagers do not receive suitable medication when they suffered from commonly found diseases as diarrhea, gastritis and typhoid.
Our partner Shanti Nepal provides training and technical support to local clinics through implementing a Community Health and Empowerment programme. In order to improve medical services, trainings are given to local government health workers. Meanwhile, indigenous organisations and local churches are taught how to respond to local needs on primary health care and basic livelihood. Partner also supports small scale drinking water initiatives, antenatal and postnatal checking to pregnant women and teaches villagers about children nutrition and health. For the economic improvement, trainings are given to community development groups on techniques of planting, chicken and goat / sheep raising and handicraft. For improving the health of villagers, the programme actively promotes the importance of sanitation as well as building of toilets. Many villages experienced community transformation because of this programme.
The Kumal community is a good example. Several years ago, only 6 households out of 154 had pit latrines in the village. The level of hygiene and sanitation of the community was low. People practiced open-field defecation therefore wastes laid around and gave off offensive smell in the air. In 2009 partner setup an Environmental Sanitation Coordination Committee to address the environmental health issues of the community. The committee raised villagers’ sanitation awareness through cultural events and audio-visual media. Before long, villagers started to commit in building toilets. Shanti Nepal supported the community by providing materials and technical skill training on toilet building. Villagers then started to dig pits, make walls and collect materials for the toilets. Within 3 months, all 154 households in the community built toilets successfully. Community members have transformed from the poor habit of open-field defecation. Local rules are also developed to keep the village clean. Now the Kumal community can enjoy an improvement in sanitation and a clean environment.
With your support:
HK$250 will subsidise a household to build a toilet;
HK$500 will provide two basic health sessions for mothers’ groups;
HK$1,000 will provide four training sessions on livelihood skills to community groups
A community health service programme in Yuci and Taiyuan to provide clinical care for patients, conduct community assessments and diagnosis, training of community health workers, develop and provide health education to migrant workers and pre-school students through SES
Farza was once a fertile piece of land in Kabul of Afghanistan and was especially famous with its grape vineyards. But it has been for the past few years the frontier of conflicts between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. When the Taliban retreated, people began returning to their villages. The place has been converted into a devastated state by reason of the war. It lacks health and sanitation facilities. It was reported that about 45% of the children there can go to schools, but actually the figure may be lower. People’s living there is difficult by reason of unemployment, lack of arable land, illiteracy, poor health, gender inequalities and vulnerability to disasters.
CEDAR has been supporting our partner in Afghanistan in its services for over 1300 villagers in Farza since 2007. A group based approach is applied in building up relationship of mutual trust, love and aid among the villager members. Each of the 44 self-help groups receives some basic health and literacy education and skills training of different kinds every week.
Agricultural trainings bring solution to villagers’ problem on unbalanced diet. In the project, new farming techniques on fruit tree farming and kitchen gardening are introduced bringing improvement to villagers’ health as well as the environment. A number of livelihood trainings including animal husbandry, fish farming, tailoring and carpet making are also provided. The project also consists of micro-credit loans to assist those unemployed villagers in setting up their own small businesses. Some would do animal and poultry husbandry and sell the fresh eggs and milk in the local bazaar at reasonable price. Meanwhile, women groups will receive education on basic health care bringing improvements to their physical health. The project also encourages mutual aid funds among group members for community developments. Eight of the groups have started money saving plans for installation of water blocks so as to protect their field from flooding.