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| Yingesu & Mantegbosh with their midwife supervisor at the Agita Health Center |
I will never
forget my long journey out to a remote village a few years ago to meet with a
small group of midwives serving rural women in Ethiopia. The trip was particularly memorable because I
was around 5 months pregnant with my second son and as we got closer to the
village the road began to disappear and I became increasingly uncomfortable
bouncing around our truck. My little guy
apparently enjoyed the ride while in utero since I felt his first kicks right
after our trip.
We visited two young midwives, Yingesu and Mantegbosh, who were
working at the Agita Health Center, a tiny clinic serving a population of
51,000 people. Remarkably in their first year, the girls had made over
100 deliveries and provided approximately 1,000 women with prenatal care, which
increased access to maternal care in the region by over 90%. Yingesu
shared with us how she had recently delivered triplets successfully by
candlelight due to a loss of electricity. She enthusiastically said, “my
hope for the future is to help my community, and I am proud of my job…I feel
fantastic because I can save the lives of women and children!” Yet she is faced with the challenge of
delivering babies by candlelight because basic infrastructure like electricity
is unreliable.
We
recently had an irritatingly outage of Internet access in our house and the
idea of unreliable electricity and lack of access to good roads is honestly far
from my mind. But for so many, these are
daily actualities that effect life giving work such as maternal care. In fact, as of 2010, 68% of people in
sub-Sahara Africa live without access to electricity. A lack of power impacts millions of people by
hindering quality health care, ability to run businesses, hinders education and
encourages usage of kerosene and open fires for cooking, heating and lighting
that produce toxic fumes and an increase in accidents inside the home.
According to WHO, “more than 50% of premature deaths among children under age 5
are due to pneumonia caused by ‘soot’ inhaled from household air pollution.”
Because
of these realities, I am thrilled when there are opportunities before our government,
which would send taxpayer dollars to projects that make broad and lasting
impacts. Yesterday, the Electrify Africa
Act was passed in the House and will soon be introduced in the Senate. As summarized by the One Campaign,
“the bill seeks to prioritize and coordinate U.S. government resources to
achieve three goals in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020:
·
Promote
first-time access to electricity for at least 50 million people, particularly
the poor.
·
Encourage
the installation of at least an additional 20,000 megawatts of electrical
power.
·
Promote
efficient institutional platforms that provide electrical service to rural and
underserved areas.”
With
all the many challenges facing health care, education, and economic growth in
the developing world the significance of adequate infrastructure like
electricity cannot be understated. Please
write your Representative in Congress – especially your Senator - to vote for the
Electrify Africa Act! In light of
Mother’s Day weekend, send a message to girls like Yingesu that we in America
want to make backbone investments in her country to enable her to provide
quality maternal care to the women and children in her village.
To
engage Congress through the One Campaign on Electrify Africa Act click HERE
