When given the option to create a teaching module for the traditional birth attendants, I could not believe how lucky I was to have this project. Because I am going into Ob/Gyn and am extremely interested in global women's health, this was the perfect project for me.
The traditional birth attendants (TBAs) are illiterate village women who assist with deliveries. They are untrained, so Seva Mandir holds teaching sessions for the women to give them more skills. This includes triaging and teaching them when and where to get more help.
Seva Mandir provides TBAs with a kit for home deliveries. When I saw the kit and Dr. Sangeeta explained each tool to me, I could not hold back my excitement! The TBAs are truly delivering patients with the bare necessities, and it's quite heroic what they are able to do with limited tools and knowledge. Below you can see the kit contains a fetoscope to listen to the fetal heart beat. There is a tarp to lay on the ground because most women deliver on dirt floors. There are even very basic tools such as a nail clipper for the TBA to help with hygiene. I was amazed to get to see the kit.
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| Dr. Sangeeta and Lindsay with TBA kit |
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| TBA kit for labor and delivery |
Finding a TBA to interview was actually quite difficult, and when we finally interviewed a TBA we required a Wagri to Hindi translator as well as a Hindi to English translator. The interview was pretty crazy with so many iterations of the same sentences. During the interview I asked Santa, the TBA, how she liked to be taught. She actually did not understand the question and after multiple attempts to ask the question in different ways, I realized her education was so minimal that she did not even know of different methods of learning. Her perspective really made me step back and rethink how to formulate my module. I had to make it much more simple while still engaging the TBAs.
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| Santa, the traditional birth attendant in the middle after our interview |
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