43 days and counting down...

Last week Marijke attended a talk by Dr Margaret Maimbolwa, Assistant Dean of Medicine at the University of Zambia in Lusaka.  Dr Maimbolwa was in Canada to cement an ongoing partnership between the University of BC Okanagan and the University of Zambia.  Marijke enjoyed Dr Maimbolwa's discussion about community health workers, in particular the need for more culturally appropriate training for traditional birth attendants (TBA).  Dr Maimbolwa spoke of the 53% of Zambian women who are birthing "unattended" or with TBA's.  One of the main issues in rural Zambia is if there is a complication at a homebirth, transportation to the nearest hospital is often difficult (not to mention expensive).  Therefore, the most important focus of TBA training is recognizing complications early enough to transfer labouring women to the hospital before either the mother or baby's life is in danger.  This inspired Marijke to consider studying TBA training in Zambia for her major 4th year paper.

This past week both Marijke and Aly were in Vancouver attending the Professional Issues intensive at UBC. One evening was spent with the team traveling to work internationally this summer (instructor Cathy Ellis RM, Grace Brinkman RM, 3 nursing students, 1 medical student and 4 midwifery students).  It was exciting to get together and talk about what to bring and how to prepare and hear first hand stories from students who were there last year.  We also reviewed our emergency skills and discussed management strategies to work in low resources setting.

Thus far, tons of people have offered their support financially and otherwise.  We have been gathering supplies to take with us that include needles, blood pressure cuffs, stethoscopes, catheters, gloves, baby clothes, and much more.  Also, with the cash donations we are hoping to purchase a vacuum to assist with deliveries as we have learnt this is much needed at St Francis Hospital.  As we were packing up our house in Prince George we came across our fabulous battery-free wind-up flashlights that will be useful when there is irregular access to electricity!! We plan to bring a bunch and leave them at the hospital when we go.

43 days and counting...