Georg, Sarah, Pink Punter, Mandela Day Project and Maternal Health Care in Nigeria.

It was rather a small turn out last week as so many people are away at the moment.

Georg Knoke spoke of his time working with our new head of the SAPS, Ria Phiyega.  It was interesting, informative and very positive.

Fortunately we had a number of visitors!





















This week's Speaker is Sarah Mitchell

She is one of the recipients of the Scholarship we give to the Wits Department of Sociology each year.  The other recipient, Cassandra Pireu, will speak to us next month.

Pink Punter
Helping behind the bar at the Wanderers' Club las Saturday was an understatement! What a mob of pink-clothed young people!   I thought they might stop drinking to watch the Durban July as most of them had bets on it.....no ways!  They really were an exceptionally nice crowd.


Helping were Jankees & Adriaen Sligcher, Mike & Linda Vink, Peter & Jean James-Smith, Jean & Anke McSweeney, Nici Hammerschmidt, Russ Smith and DonLindsay. Thanks to all!  This 'camera pic' of Linda and Russ is the only one we have of the event.....just as well!


Mandela Day

From Linda Vink: 

The Rotary Club of Johannesburg New Dawn will be surprising one of our key projects, the Christ Church Christian Care Centre, with 67 donations on Mandela Day. This centre is based in Yeoville and provides accommodation, education, care and counselling for up to 60 homeless and destitute children of all ages.

We will also be serving breakfast on Mandela Day to a charity very close to us, Children of Fire, along with one of our members, Georg Knoke.

Please bring a packet of food stuff to Rotary on Wednesday for the 5 C's.  A Packet of Rice would be perfect.

Rotarian Action Group expands maternal health project in Nigeria

By Vanessa N. Glavinskas
Rotary International News -- 6 July 2012
 

 

 

Former fistula patients in Nigeria. Photo courtesy of the Rotarian Action Group for Population Growth and Sustainable Development

Rotary International on Facebook

In Nigeria, one out of every 18 women dies as a result of childbirth. The country has the second-highest maternal mortality rate in the world. 

That’s why the Rotarian Action Group for Population Growth and Sustainable Development targeted the northern Nigerian states of Kaduna and Kano with a pilot program aimed at reducing maternal mortality by preventing and treating obstetric fistula, a serious birth injury. From 2005 until 2010, the project, partly supported by a grant from The Rotary Foundation, reduced maternal death by 60 percent in participating hospitals, reached 1 million women of childbearing age, and repaired obstetric fistulas for 1,500 Nigerian women. 

“We have to empower women, and women cannot be empowered if they can’t make their own choices in antenatal care and child spacing,” says Dr. Robert Zinser, CEO of the Rotarian Action Group for Population Growth and Sustainable Development and member of the Rotary Club of Ludwigshafen-Rheinschanze, Germany. 

Zinser has been to Nigeria nearly 20 times to work on maternal and child health projects, including the northern Nigeria pilot focused on the prevention and treatment of fistulas. An obstetric fistula is a birth injury that can cause stillbirth and, in the mother, chronic incontinence, infection, nerve damage, or death. The primary cause is labor that goes on for too long, often for days. Because 70 percent of Nigerian women deliver at home, often without access to proper medical care, long labors that would be prevented in the developed world are more common. 

According to the World Health Organization, “prevention is the key,” Zinser says. “We insisted on a comprehensive approach of better antenatal care” that includes training, equipment, quality, hygiene, and benchmarking. 

The project also included surgery to repair damage from fistula. Many women with the injury don’t know it can be repaired, so Rotarians created a series of radio programs that explained the condition, its causes, and the available treatment. 

“People listened, and village women found out their fistulas could be repaired at the Rotary center. We repaired 1,500 fistulas, 500 more than our goal,” Zinser says. 

The action group is now preparing to replicate the project in the states of Abuja and Onoda, with plans to eventually establish the model in other central and southern Nigeria states.

Zinser is adamant that the project can be implemented in other areas with high maternal mortality. “We must save the mothers so that the mothers can save the world,” he says. 

• The action group has a team of medical experts available to help clubs propose and implement projects in the area of maternal health. To learn more about this or how to start a project like the Nigeria pilot, visit maternal-health.org. 
• Watch “The Edge of Joy,” a documentary that follows doctors, midwives, and families inside a maternity ward in Kano.
• Read about other maternal health projects on the Rotary Voices blog.
• Watch "Doing Good: Intro," a video about how your comtributions to The Rotary Foundation support programs like these. Contribute now.