Ghanaian midwife receives International award

Daily Graphic (pg 11) Tues. June 24/10

By Linda Asante Agyei, Washington DC & Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho, Ghana

THE term Zorkor Initiative would be popular to the people in the Upper East Region, especially women as it has helped reduce maternal mortality and increased delivery at the Zorko Health Centre.
Introduced by Hajia Mary Isaka, a 53 year old Senior Staff Midwife from Zorkor, a village in the Bongo District, the initiative blends both orthodox and traditional birth attendance practices.
Through the initiative, delivery at the Zorkor Health Centre increased from 40 in 2002 to 88 in 2003 then 216 in 2004, 417 in 2005, 460 in 2006, 479 in 2007 and then dropped to 423 in 2008.
Through the initiative and other best practices introduced by Hajia Isaka in all the three health centres in the Bongo District where she worked, precisely at the Valley Zone Community Clinic, from 2000 to 2003, the Zorkor Health Centre; 2003 to 2009 and the Anafobisi Clinic where she currently works, she was recently presented with the international Midwife Champion of the Year award.
Awarded by Jhpiego, a global health non-profit making organisation affiliated with the John Hopkins University, it is in recognition of her invaluable work as a midwife in her community.
The Midwife Champion of the Year Award recognises the work of midwives in low-resource settings and the award is given to a midwife who has made an extraordinary effort in a developing nation, specifically in training midwives, educating communities, advocacy and implementing evidence-based midwifery care and innovating to save life.
As part of the award, she was given 5,000 dollars to support her work in the community at a ceremony in the United States of America (USA) on June 6, 2010.
She was selected from more than a dozen nominations that were solicited from the World Health Organisation (WHO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO). She was nominated by UNFPA for her work in the Bongo District in the Upper West Region.
Hajia Isaka completed her midwifery training in 1997 at the Bolgatanga Nursing Training College and has dedicated herself to improving the health of her community and, through her work and other activities, she has helped saved the lives of hundreds of pregnant women and their new-borns.
Expressing her gratitude, she said “I did not think anyone really cared about someone working in such a remote place. I didn’t think the world would care about what I was doing. I am overwhelmed by the honour and the attention."
She was posted to the Zorko Health Centre in 2003 where maternal mortality was quiet high coupled with high rate of teenage pregnancy. It was the only health facility but was not patronised by pregnant women as they preferred to deliver at home.
To help find solutions to the problems, she met with opinion leaders; the district assembly, religious groups and other groups where she discussed the issue of reducing the maternal mortality rate and control of the high incidence of teenage pregnancy in the district.
Hajia in consultation with the women in the community realised that the reason why the women were delivering at home was to exhibit to their husbands and the entire community that they have been faithful to their husbands. Again, delivering at home, they will be getting family members to assist them and also prepare them hot water to bath and ‘Zomkum’, a drink prepared from millet flower with a nutritious value which enhances the production of breast milk.
This brought about the Zorkor Initiative where she allowed women in labour to choose family members who they want to enter the labour ward with them, ensured that the health centre provided hot water for bathing after delivery and finally prepared the ‘Zomkum’ drink for the mothers.
Also she re-organised the health centre’s maternity ward, insisted on strict infection prevention measures and increased the number of delivery kits.
Hajia then educated the women and the entire community on the need to attend antenatal, deliver in the health facility and attend postnatal clinic.
She entreated people to rush to the health centre and inform them when a woman was in labour and she then arranged to have an old Toyota truck, which she borrowed from the Catholic Diocese, to pick the pregnant women, who may be living far away, to the health facility.
Since 2003, she has single-handedly delivered 2,240 babies.
At her facility, she ensured the staff’s commitment to high-quality, effective and efficient health services; respect for their clients; adherence to punctuality; pleasant interpersonal relationships; and regular dialogue with patients.
Hajia continues to train community health nurses and works to establish innovative and effective health care programmes throughout the Bongo District.
She explained that the delivery rate at Zorkor dropped in 2008 because she formed Virgin Clubs, which succeeded in greatly reducing teenage pregnancy. She has provided training for peer educators, on-the-job training for community health nurses and extension workers, preparing them to participate in uncomplicated, supervised births, maintain records and network with community and health volunteers.
At Anafobisi where she currently works, Hajia Isaka has not rested on her oars, as since 2009 that she joined the Anafobisi Clinic, she has introduced initiatives such as building a temporary bathroom structure for the mothers to bath after delivery, giving motor riders a litter of fuel when they bring in pregnant women in labour, among other interventions, which ecourage women to deliver at the facility.
This has also helped to increase delivery rate at the clinic from three in January 2009, when she started work at the facility, to 156 from September 2009 to date.
She said her award would serve as a motivation to all midwives in the country to give of their best and thanked the Director General of the Ghana Health Service and his staff, UNICEF, the Upper East Regional Health team, the Bongo District Health Management team and the Bolgatanga Catholic Diocese, among others, for their support.