iCare

Care? Care what? Who Cares? You Care? What's Care? i Care?

These are some of the responses I've fielded when explaining that I was going overseas with CARE.

When they thought I was saying an acronym, then I would said, "Care, you know like 'I care'" and one would say "You care what?" I almost started calling the organization "iCare". I've started just saying "CARE Canada" or "CARE International" because somehow the second word makes it sound more official.

So, what is CARE anyway?

Well, as per their website, CARE started as an effort to deliver "care" packages to people in Europe after World War II. Over the past several decades, their work as evolved into focusing on emergency relief, economic development, food security, and maternal health. What attracted me to look more closely at the organization was that in their mission and vision statement, they reference wanting to work with the poorest communities that are not well served by other organizations.

          We seek a world of hope, tolerance and social justice, 

where poverty has been overcome and people live in  dignity and security.

So, I applied and was accepted as a "Volunteer Nurse Advisor" under the umbrella of a maternal health program already well underway in the Tabora region of Tanzania. 

In 2010, the G8 leaders committed to financially supporting initiatives to improve maternal, newborn, and child health and  called it the Muskoka initiative.  (Every time I hear a Tanzanian say it, I think of some woods in Ontario, and momentarily wonder why we are discussing the Canadian wilderness....)

With funding from the Canadian government, CARE proposed and has implemented the TABASAM project - or the Tabora Adolescent and Safe Motherhood - project. (Don't worry, there won't be quiz on acronyms!)

To start, Tabora is not an easy place to get to. It is a 17 hour drive from the coastal capital of Tanzania (Dar es Salaam) and the only airplane that used to fly here is now totally broken (the engine failed and had to do an emergency landing). It is a mere 6 hour drive from Mwanza, on Lake Victoria on dusty, bumpy roads. Thus, it is also not a very popular place to do development work. Unlike many other easily accessible African towns and cities, you don't see NGO signs and landrovers of NGOs dotting the landscape every where you go. According to the last unofficial head count, there were only 42 foreigners in this town of at least 150,000, and most of those people are in the tobacco industry. 

There is not much around other than farms; no beaches to lay on, no mountains to climb, and no lions to watch. The wikipedia page and Lonely planet say this about the town of Tabora:

Tabora does not have many tourist attractions. 

It is well off the beaten track, with few tourists.

In my ancedotal experience, it is the places the hardest to get to and are least "interesting" that are the least served and have some of the worst statistics for health, education, and development. So, I am actually pretty pleased with the fact that CARE chose this area for their work - because it is so under-served. 

Working in close cooperation with the Tanzania government at all levels, CARE has implemented advanced training for Community Health Workers (CHW) focusing on maternal and reproductive health. Nearly 1,000 workers have been trained and equipped with a bicycle, t-shirt and small monthly stipend to work in their communities to educate and monitor pregnant women, promote family planning, and facilitate referrals to appropriate health centres if concerns or complications present. The CHWs with this advanced training are present in 176 clinics/dispensaries and 56% of government facilities across all of the districts in the Tabora region (kind of like a province).

An area that the project has not focused on is the hospitals as it has been assumed that they were equipped with the necessary infrastructure and support to handle the complex maternal cases.  The hospital administrator is very appreciative of the work of CARE in the community and so asked if they could receive some support in the hospital. And this is how my position came about.

While my career experience has not been in maternal health, my interests lie in helping people assess and improve their workplace and health practices. And while the Tanzania health staff told me I'd be delivering babies "by next week", I have only gone as far as rubbing a labouring woman's back or weighing some preemies :-) and I think I should keep it that way! The staff are fully capable and are experts at their jobs - I am certainly not there to teach them how to deliver babies! Rather, I will work alongside them to try to improve the workplace in which they deliver the babies. 

In upcoming blog posts, I will describe "a day in the life of the maternity ward" - and it will guarantee to shock and surprise - in both postive and heart breaking ways. 

(p.s. you are under no obligation, but if you are interested in giving a "CAREing" gift for friends and family at Christmas, giving one of these presents instead of another sweater or tie is a great idea!)