Cambodia tackles high maternal mortality

Abstract

Inside the Red Cross Health Centre in Phnom Penh Cambodia’s capital city a class in basic life-saving skills is in progress. The students are midwives from remote villages in Prey Veng a desperately impoverished southeastern province in the country. Like model pupils they attentively watch the teacher demonstrate cardiopulmonary resuscitation using a rubber doll. It is learning by doing. In the middle of a class Meach Sarorn a student is called away to help out in a delivery case. The operation theatre at the centre with its immaculately clean environs and modern equipment is a world apart from the government health centre at Pnoeuv village where Sarorn works. But for the village midwife the 2-week training provides an invaluable opportunity. Not only is she picking up expertise in life-saving measures such as postpartum haemorrhage interventions and infant resuscitation and is better equipped to use the new medical gadgets her health centre has acquired the training has vastly expanded her knowledge of antenatal and postnatal care. (excerpt)