For the last six years, Fundación Pachamama's Jungle Mamas program has been working diligently with our Achuar community partners to ensure safe births, healthy families, and the empowerment of women. To grow in these endeavors, Jungle Mamas recently formed a new partnership with One Heart Worldwide, enabling it to expand its prenatal care training curriculum for Achuar women.
Safe Births Equal Strong Communities
In the interview video above, in-country Program Director, Robin Fink, describes Jungle Mamas as "an inter-cultural maternal health care program that works to save lives at birth in Achuar communities in the south central region of the Ecuadorian Amazon." The program functions on the knowledge that, in providing health care for mothers and infants, they are creating healthy families that go on to form healthy communities that can continue to protect the Amazon.
In addition to promoting healthy pregnancies, and providing education and training to Achuar women, the program provides Safe Birth Kits for new mothers to aid in clean deliveries, and works to improve sanitation and reduce groundwater pollution to improve community health.
Jungle Mamas also is making efforts to collaborate with Ecuador’s Ministry of Public Health and other organizations to ensure the women working to save lives at birth will be recognized by the government.
Jungle Mamas Partners with One Heart Worldwide
Jungle Mamas is thrilled to have recently partnered with One Heart Worldwide earlier in 2013.
One Heart Worldwide has worked to reduce maternal and newborn mortality in Nepal, Tibet, and Mexico, and has underscored the importance of providing safe birth education in ways that are culturally appropriate.
Together, Jungle Mamas and One Heart Worldwide have started a program focused on creating a more comprehensive and detailed curriculum for their birthing classes. The newer, expanded curriculum will be 6 months long, and include 2 months of coursework taught by mid-wives and obstetricians, and 4 months of practical clinical care done as apprenticeships in public hospitals and clinics throughout Ecuador.
Recently, they held a workshop where 20 new Achuar women were trained on maternity health education.
Effectively Training Women on the Ground for Better Community Outreach
During the workshop, the women learned how to calculate expected due dates, how to measure the uterus, take pulse and temperature, measure blood pressure, listen to the baby’s heartbeats with a fetoscope, and how to identify the signs of high-risk pregnancies early on in preparation for potential transfers to hospitals outside the rainforest. They also practiced working with families to develop birth plans and emergency plans in anticipation of any special needs.
The team that facilitated the workshop was comprised of Shuar and Achuar women, two nurse-midwives, from Ecuador and the United States, an indigenous male nurse practitioner from the community of Tarahumara-Raramuri in Chihuahua, Mexico and a PhD in Public Health.
Moving forward, these 20 Achuar women will serve as “Teaching Facilitators” committed to doing a minimum of three prenatal visits and one postpartum visit to each pregnant woman in their communities and communities as distant as 4 hours away by foot.
The women will travel to 47 communities of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest to provide prenatal care and assist expectant mothers in roadless and remote areas that lack access to public health care.
Because contact with the outside world is still extremely limited, with Achuar territory only accessible by plane, the trainees will often be the only source of prenatal care for many of the communities. Their expertise will be essential for continuing Jungle Mamas' efforts to build healthy communities.
Jungle Mama's two-year goal is to train the 34 Achuar women they work with so that prenatal care may eventually reach the entire Achuar population.
