Midwives from Sierra Leone Attend International Conference

These three midwives from the Aberdeen Women's Centre attended the conference.

The staff members at Aberdeen Women’s Centre (AWC) in Freetown, Sierra Leone, are known as a tenacious, enthusiastic team, as they constantly strive to improve their quality of care. One AWC midwife recently explained, “You learn until you die.” The Gloag Foundation manages and funds the center, with additional financial support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Fistula Care project. AWC began fistula repair services in 2004 and recently opened a ward for maternity care. In June, three midwives from AWC traveled to the 29th Triennial Congress of the International Confederation of Midwives  in Durban, South Africa, where they took numerous opportunities to learn from workshops, speeches, and interactions with health care professionals from around the world.

More than 3,000 health care professionals from over 100 countries came together for the conference, and the AWC midwives took advantage of this opportunity to meet other women working in the area of safe motherhood. One AWC midwife, Isatu Wenday Mansaray, explained, “We met with different midwives worldwide, shared ideas, and made new friends.” Katie Christie noted that “it was such a rich experience networking and reconnecting with midwives from all over.”

The conference sessions and workshops addressed issues such as prevention of HIV transmission from mother to child, breastfeeding, and episiotomy. One attendee, Mariatah Bah, was particularly impressed by a session on antenatal care. The doctor who ran this session asked participants to hold their breath for five minutes; he explained that newborn babies feel similar pain when they cannot breathe. He presented the midwives with techniques for encouraging antenatal breathing, including clearing the airway, and advised them to keep babies as warm and dry as possible after birth. The midwives also received CDs, videos, and books on topics in midwifery.

The three midwives look forward to bringing the lessons they learned back to the AWC. Isatu Wenday Mansaray said that she would implement the skills she learned, and that ideas from the conference “will be shared with other midwives, even those yet to come.” Katie Christie said that she returned to Sierra Leone “motivated and inspired to mentor and encourage the midwives at the center.” Fellow AWC staff and patients will reap the benefits of this conference in the years to come.