Women Making a Difference

Maternal and Child Health Programs Deliver for Pakistan

Nazia Bibi

	Nazia Bibi and the supplies from her home birthing suite. Source: USAID

Nazia Bibi was enjoying a wedding reception in her village when she heard a fellow guest cry out in pain. She looked across the yard to see a very pregnant woman in obvious discomfort.

“The baby is coming!” the woman shrieked. “Take me home.”

For Bibi, 25, this was her big moment. “No. I won’t take you home,” she told her firmly. “I am a trained community midwife. You are coming to my house.”

She led the woman into her modest home and put her on a maternity bed in the corner hidden by a stand-up curtain. Neatly laid out on a table next to the bed were a stethoscope, a new razor blade, a scale, and various instruments associated with childbirth.

Several hours later, there were cries of a healthy boy, delivered in the birthing suite set up in the midwife’s family home only five days earlier. The mother, looking down at the gurgling infant, wept.

Nazia had recently graduated as a community midwife from the School of Nursing Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, a city of 3 million situated south of the capital, Islamabad. Her village of Rahim, which is on the outskirts of the city, previously had no available skilled birth attendant.

She is among more than 2,200 young women across Pakistan who have completed 18 months of USAID-supported training in midwifery, and have been equipped with close to $1,000 worth of equipment and supplies to ensure safe deliveries.

“The training and equipment that allowed me to establish the midwife home has strengthened the belief and trust of the community in me,” Nazia said. “Now, they recognize me as a skilled birth attendant. Pregnant women seek me out.”

For the last six years, USAID has strengthened Pakistan’s health system by helping communities improve delivery of health care services for more than 5.7 million mothers and newborns.

The results speak for themselves. By the end of the project in January, the rate of skilled birth attendance jumped to 52 percent from a national average of 39 percent, and the number of pregnant women who had at least three antenatal visits increased by 29 percent.

“That was my first baby I delivered myself,” Nazia said, recalling the eventful wedding reception. “And I am sure it won’t be my last.”

Story provided by USAID/Pakistan

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