Bridging Clean Water and Maternal Health

Yesterday, on the Carbon for Water campaign trail, we met with Francis Odhiambo, the provincial public health officer of the Western Province in Kenya. He had a great impact in helping connect the dots between having safe drinking water, combating diseases and women having safe pregnancies and deliveries. Mr. Francis Odhiambo believed strongly that women suffer twice as much as men on health issues relating to water borne disease because of their daily activities and chores around the house and for their families. Women not only face the hardship of looking for nonexistent safe water, but they also have to trek miles to get stream water and firewood for boiling it. In his words during the interaction with the two Women Bloggers Deliver winners, Mr. Odhiambo explained that the LifeStraw public health intervention by Vestergaard Frandsen would go a long way in supporting the already stretched government health facilities in the Western Province.

A visit to Emusanda Health Centre, a health clinic built by Vestergaard Frandsen, brought to light many other concerns in relation to maternal health. In our interaction with James Okwiri, who has been living with HIV for the past 7 years, the clinic has saved many local residents from having to travel a long distance to the hospital in Kakamega. Not only do they find the treatments at the health center life-saving, they also consider the plan by Vestergaard Frandsen to build a maternity ward at Emusanda a much needed intervention.

The overarching issue on maternal and child mortality has had its effect on this community. Ms. Sinafu Mapesa, a woman living with HIV, explained the danger of home delivery and how a lack of access to skilled care has claimed the lives of many women. She experienced post-partum hemorrhage during one of her deliveries, but she was lucky to have her bleeding stop. Many other women were never that lucky. She stressed the importance of having a maternity ward in her community that can attend to pregnant women, most especially women living with HIV/AIDS. Ms. Brenda Opika who has an 11-year-old HIV positive child, shared her pain that she never got tested for HIV when she was pregnant. She said that she wished she had the information and knowledge to lower the risk of transmission of HIV by delivering through caesarian section. Not only was she excited that many women would now have the care and education she never received at a new maternity ward, she is ready to volunteer to assist pregnant women that might be living with HIV.

Only 44% of women in Kenya deliver with skilled birth attendants and the maternal mortality ratio is 560 deaths per 100,000 live births. The interactions and visitations with the authority on public health issues and people of Kakamega showed me the story behind these statistics. To attain the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5, (Reducing Child Mortality Rates and Improving Maternal Health) especially with so many preventable cases, a much need maternity ward will be a round peg in a round hole for the people of Emusanda in Western Province Kenya.

"The provision of a 24 hours running maternity health centre would help pregnant women at Emusanda Community" – Pelista Chibole

The brains and the bruises: meeting the girls of Malava Girls High School Kakamega

As part of the Women Bloggers Deliver contest, and the Carbon for Water campaign, I am excited to be traveling around the Western Province of Kenya, meeting women and girls who are hard-hit by the issues associated with the Millennium Development Goals. Yesterday, I got the chance to visit the Malava’s Girls High School -- a reaffirmation time that the Millennium Development Goals are so important, especially the goal addressing women and girls’ issues.

Team Vestergaard Frandsen and Women Deliver (consisting of Janna Oberdorf, Elisabeth Wilhelm, Rachel Cernansky and I) visited the Malava Girls High School to demonstrate how to use the LifeStraw Family water filters, a water purification tool that is being distributed to 900,000 Kenyans in the Western Province. The findings about water borne diseases and lack of safe water were very revealing -- teachers told us about how they have to use some form of chemical to purify their water or boil the water for drinking. While some of the girls mentioned that they often went home thirsty and empty-handed after spending a whole day in a very long queue to get tap water (where available). They said they would just let the stream water settle and drink, or their family would use firewood to boil the water thereby adding to carbon emissions in the atmosphere. A few of the girls who shared their experiences with us during questions and answers time, explained how some of them have suffered some form of water borne disease ranging from typhoid fever to diarrhea or having their family members suffer bilharzias.

The female students, who were up to 500 in attendance, believed in healthy living and safe drinking water as a disease free mechanism. The discussion took a turn as the girls began to trust in the team, and they spoke in confidence to each member of the team about prevailing issues affecting them as a girl-child, affecting their family and their development. It was an electrifying moment of revelations and counseling. It was not so long ago that I was in this stage of life too, with issues so germane to me I wish I had trusted and knowledgeable people to share them with. I was glad that I am part of a team with whom these brilliants girls can share their bruises, their concerns and their struggles in an unequal world.

Interacting with us were some of the female students who had to contend with different life issues – from physical and sexual abuse in the home to questions of sexuality and sexual health. Many more girls gathered around us in different groups to recount different stories of their young but bruised life. Beatrice suffers extremely painful menstruation (Dysmenorrheal) and her mother has prevented her from using the oral contraceptive that the doctor prescribed for her without any other alternative, she goes through pains for more than 10 days as long as her bleeding last to the point paralyses! There was little we could do to attend to all the needs of these brilliant girls but to exchange contact with promises to refer them to organizations and individuals within Kenya working on these issues of concern to them.

In less than one hour, discussions had gone around empowerment of girls and their family, provision of safe drinking water, and even though the female students are not having children yet nor are they children themselves, they were able to discuss the challenges around child mortality and maternal health. They also know a lot about the recurring danger of climate change and global warming if no intervention is offered by all of us. Just in one meeting MDGs goal 3- Promote gender equality and empowerment of women , 4- Reduce Child Mortality Rates, 5- Improve maternal health, 6-Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and 7 – Ensure environmental Sustainability were discussed!

We have all started on the right path; supporting each other, educating each other, demanding that quality of our lives are improved and that we have access to basic amenities of life. I had a wonderful time with these incredible girls.

Carbon for Water, the first taste of a visiting Blogger in Kenya

As I rode through the city of Kisumu, as jet-lagged as I was, I was kept awake by a fun-loving driver who thought it was imperative to get to know Kisumu. As we journeyed through the Western Province, I began to imagine how many of the township people have access to safe drinking water. By the time we arrived in at Kakamega, I had stored in my ‘brain document' questions to ask, contributions to make, and how to satisfy my curiosity by interacting with the many people that are benefitting from the Carbon for Water project.

Carbon for Water—nice concept! LifeStraw Family—fantastic idea—but how do they all fit in together? How do they work? How will the people of Western Province, especially the women, feel about not having to boil water using firewood and purifying with a filter instead? How would they feel the impact of LifeStraw water purification on their health and time? How involved is the government of Kenya through its Ministry of Public Health? How do carbon credits work? What does this initiative mean to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals? How can we connect all the dots of all the MDGs in relation to global partnership, environmental sustainability, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, gender equality and women empowerment, maternal health, reduction of child mortality, education, and poverty alleviation with safe drinking water and reduction of carbon emissions as public health issues?

In Kakamega with Rachel Cernansky, the other Women Bloggers Deliver winner, we worked through the details of the campaign as we were debriefed by Elisabeth Wilhelm. The Carbon For Water project in Kakamega will cost over 30 million USD with distributions of LifeStraw water filters reaching nearly one million people in five weeks with 4,000 community workers and 4,000 transporters involved. All in all, 4.5 million people will benefit! This project will be run for ten years and families will be offered free replacement of the LifeStraws when they wear out. Vestergaard is committing all these efforts and finances without collecting a single dime from the beneficiaries but with the hope that carbon emissions will be drastically reduced and Vestergaard Frandsen gets paid through carbon credit!

Today is a beginning for me: to learn more, to work with this amazing team, to critically look into how deforestation of local forests will be addressed, how carbon offsets will pay off for the entire planet, how linking public health with carbon emissions by Vestergaard Frandsen will change things for the better here in Kenya, and how it will improve the quality of women’s lives and their families.

Tomorrow is when I join the Vestergaard Frandsen staff on the campaign trail, and it will all start at 6:30AM in the morning, time to get some sleep.