Check out CleanBirth.org on TV! and the *live in studio segment*

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This is a fascinating and comprehensive look at “Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Development” in Laos.  The region where I am distributing Clean Birth Kits is an area populated by minority groups.

Nutshell: if you think the Lao-Thai (majority group 67%) have it bad…try being a member of a minority group.  And God forbid you are a women…

While I wait to hear from my partner org in Laos about the arrival of the kits, I think about fundraising of course and about my future goals for the project.

Ultimately, I want to support efforts(i.e. raise money) to train midwives.

Also, once the kits are being widely used, I would like health workers to have access to blood mats and misprostol.

Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is responsible for around 25% of maternal mortality worldwide (WHO, 2007).   Clean Birth Kit can/should include a blood mat and Misoprostol.

Here’s more from Maternova’s site:

CCDRB with Pathfinder and others conducted a large operations research study to determine the efficacy and acceptability of the blood mat and misoprostol as additions to ‘clean delivery kits.’ They found that women were able to use the mat to identify postpartum hemorrhage and administer the misoprostol to themselves. 96% of the women interviewed after the study had used the Quaiyum blood mat to identify postpartum hemorrhage and would use it again.