Awareness on Safe Delivery and HIV

As part of the fellowship curriculum, Mr.Lakshmish and Mr.Ajay visited Nagalavi, a village 18 kms away from Dharwad. During the visit, we got an opportunity to do an activity on”Awareness on safe delivery and basics of HIV”. The topic was chosen based on the interest and need of the group. The activity beneficiaries were a group of women 20 in number, all aged between 18 to 35 years and only 2 were above 50 years. The activity was led by Mr.Lakshmish with the support of Mr.Ajay.

Aim: The aim of the activity was to provide information to the group members on the impact of home based deliveries.

Objectives:
1. To make sure 100% deliveries are Hospital based.
2. All the pregnant women undergo screening for HIV, thus avoid chances of HIV transmission from mother to child.

Process: The session was more of through interaction. It was found that, around 8 years back all the deliveries were home based. The village had 2 mid-wives, who did deliveries at home. Though there is no report of any hazardous situation occurred due to home based delivery, for the precautionary measures this session was conducted focusing young and adult women those were in the reproductive age. But in recent past, since more than 50% of the cases started accessing hospital for delivery, one of the mid-wife left the place. But still rest of the deliveries was done at home so the activity focused on 100% hospital based deliveries. The session covered information on the safe hospital based delivery and basics of HIV, that was linked to the consequences of home delivery.

A woman who accessed ICTC during her pregnancy came forward to speak about her experience to the group members. Her words had a great impact on the group, later she added earlier she did not understand many things that got cleared on the day’s activity.

In the beginning though the group did not open up much, later they all came up sharing their knowledge and few of their misconceptions were addressed. At the end the group brainstormed the points they learned and the session was concluded.