Three midwives belonging to the Santal community have become a true inspiration for women of the ethnic community by reaching modern reproductive health services in Gaibandha district.
They are working at Samara Union Health and Family Welfare Center (UHFWC) in Gobindaganj upazila of Gaibandha and providing sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services, antenatal care (ANC) and postnatal care (PNC) to women, pregnant mothers and adolescents belonging to all communities.
Beginning from July, 2020, the midwives have so far conducted 287 normal vaginal deliveries of pregnant mothers, including 57 Santal mothers, alongside providing ANC to 4207 pregnant mothers, including 415 Santal mothers, at Sapmara UHFWC.
They have also provided PNC services to 639 mothers, including 120 belonging to the Santal community.
As a result, awareness of the Santal community and women is rising fast to get reproductive health services at the UHFWC to ensure safe deliveries and reduce maternal and neonatal deaths.
Talking to BSS, the three Santal midwives said they were inspired to choose midwifery as their profession since childhoods after never seeing any trained birth attendants during deliveries of pregnant mothers in their community.
Local traditional birth attendants used to perform deliveries of Santal mothers adopting various unsafe traditional methods that caused unbearable pain. Pregnant Santal mothers were always taken to farmsteads where they delivered babies on dry grasses or straws in absence of their relatives.
Education of girls in their extremely backward and superstition-gripped community was not thought to be important.
The three girls somehow completed their schools when existing social customs discouraged them from attending colleges.
Midwifery education seemed like the perfect opportunity to them to achieve their dream.
To attain the SDGs, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken special initiatives to improve quality and availability of reproductive health services among marginalized communities to ensure safe delivery, reduce maternal and newborn deaths. One of the approaches taken has been to train midwives from different ethnic groups and deploy them to serve their communities. Under the initiative in 2017, four women from the Santal community were enrolled in a midwifery programme at the LAMB Nursing Institute at Parbatipur in Dinajpur with support from UNFPA.
The three Santal girls immediately decided to participate in the admissions tests, because they knew this new profession would give them an opportunity to serve their community.
Minoti Murmu and Nipa Soren of Gobindaganj upazila in Gaibandha and Silvia Mardy of Panchbibi upazila in Joypurhat were among the four lucky Santal girls to receive the scholarships for midwifery studies.
After completing the three-year midwifery diploma in 2019 with UNFPA support, they applied for a licensing examination under the Bangladesh Nursing and Midwifery Council and succeeded in becoming registered midwives.
They joined Sapmara UHFWC in 2020 as midwives as part of the UK government-funded ‘Santal Health Project’ being implemented by LAMB with technical support of UNFPA and Directorate General of Family Planning (DGFP) to improve SRHR services among the Santal community. “Serving as a midwife in my own community has been a dream come true,” Monoti said. The usual age of marriage for a girl was ten to twelve in her community with a lot of adolescent pregnancies.
Many pregnant women in the superstation-gripped Santal community continue to believe that they do not need to have medical check-ups during pregnancy due to poor awareness levels. “The Santal people have traditionally believed that blood that comes out of a mother’s uterus during delivery is unholy,” Minoti said. The mothers and new-born babies had to remain separated from their families for seven days after deliveries. Midwife Nipa Soren said, “Since the beginning our duties at Sapmara UHFWC, we have rapidly seen how attitudes of the Santal community people have begun to shift and improve.”
“Every time a pregnant mother is satisfied with all services they receive at Sapmara UHWFC,” she said.
“In the community, we tell people that all services we provide to make women's lives better, safer and healthier are free, which encourages them to come to the UHFWC for safe deliveries, ANC and PNC services,” said midwife Silvia Mardy.
The three social change-maker midwives expressed their keen desire to further improve their skills by studying abroad, if possible, to do even better and bring pride to the Santal community.
Talking to BSS, Santal mother Mowmita Tudu, 30, of village Matherpur in Gobindaganj upazila expressed happiness saying that she gave birth to a daughter at Sapmara UHWFC on January 14 last through normal delivery.
Santal mother Songita Murmu, 22, of nearby village Rampur also expressed gratitude to the midwives at the UHFWC for extending all
assistance and taking maximum care in ensuring her safe delivery in giving birth to a female child on February 17 last.
Project Manager Mahatab Liton said the three midwives are inspiring the Santal women to avail SRHR, ANC and PNC services at Sapmara UHFWC for safe deliveries to reduce maternal deaths for achieving the SDGs leaving no one behind.