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We’re dedicated to making sure all mothers have access to high-quality pre-natal, delivery, and postnatal care. But what does access mean for Aka women - an indigenous, semi-nomadic forest dwelling people that don’t live in the villages that have easy access to our rural health clinics?
In the rural areas where we work, the only reliable way of transport is walking. The Aka population that lives in the forested areas in south-eastern CAR routinely travels across the borders of CAR and the two neighboring Congos. The Aka women that come to our rural clinic usually come from 3 - 15 miles away, and this journey via small forest paths is long enough to discourage these women from benefiting from routine maternal health care.
This year we’re expanding our maternal health program in two ways to make sure more women have access to the health services that will keep they and their babies happy and healthy.
The first is we’re rehabilitating, equipping, and operating a new maternity ward 10 miles to the south of our first rural clinic. Not only is this new maternity situated in a town where we can expect 30 deliveries per month, but it also provides much better access to a large Aka population living in the surrounding forest. This close proximity is essential so that our midwife staff can provide routine pre- and post-natal consultations, whereas now these women are only making the journey to our clinic when a serious health issue has already arisen.
The second component is hiring additional community midwifes who go out into the villages we serve to provide follow-up visits and make sure women are informed when they are due for a visit to our clinic for pre- or post-natal care.
For the first time, we’re hiring a traditional midwife from the Aka community to provide a connection to this harder to reach populations. In addition to informing pregnant women on the importance of delivering their baby at a health clinic with trained staff, our community midwife from the Aka community will be a liaison to make sure women are informed and ready to make the journey into the clinic for pre- and post-natal care.
We couldn’t be more excited about these new projects!
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Our goal is to provide a continuum of care for our patients that have not had access to any medical care before Senitizo began its operations in the Central African Republic. Two of the three babies in this photo were some of the first babies born after our maternity opened. Here, their mothers have brought them back to the clinic to be treated for some of the common, but deadly, diseases they've since come down with (malaria, respiratory infections, bacterial/diarrheal diseases). Building trust with mothers during pregnancy, ensuring a safe birth, and providing health care to young families is at the core of Senitizo's mission. To date we've treated over 20,000 patients at the clinic since opening in 2021!
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