As you've likely heard, Nepal is in the throes of a second wave of Covid-19. This has raised fears that, just like during and after the lockdown of 2020, women will be using reproductive, maternal and child health services much less than usual, or as necessary. One result is likely to be more births taking place in risky home settings.
Today, we’re going on the road to visit two such homes. We set out to track what seemed to be a magic pill used to protect pregnant women, but the trip morphed into a quest to understand why more than 1,000 Nepali women a year continue dying during what should be one of the best experiences of their lives — childbirth.
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We’re posting photos from Chimling Village on our social media accounts. Please check them out.
We’d like to thank One Heart Worldwide for their cooperation, especially Surya Bhatta, for frankly sharing his passionate opinions on maternal health, and Babita Bindu, for leading the trip to Chimling Village and providing interpretation. We'd also like to thank Kutumba, for permission to use their song Pariwartan, or Change, which you're hearing now, in this episode. And to Suraya Logan, for her work on Nepal Now's social media.
I'm Marty Logan. I wrote and produced this episode and can be reached at marty@martylogan.net. I'll talk to you again soon.
(Listen to part 2 of this report)
Resources
Location of Chimling village, Mankha Municipality
Nepal's Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health Roadmap, 2020-2030
Assessment of Nepal's misoprostol programme
Nepal Now social links
Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.
Music: amaretto needs ice ... by urmymuse (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creativ
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