The term high risk pregnancy often causes concern to clients. They may feel well ad healthy, and have always been. Sometimes at their first appointment in pregnancy they find that they are classified as having a “high risk” pregnancy. Sometimes some new information arises during the pregnancy and you are told that you have become high risk. Why? What does…
Midwifery in the UK is very different to midwifery in Malawi, and to midwifery in many other countries. For those who have grown up in the UK with the NHS, there is a general acceptance that healthcare is freely available, and an acceptance that the system is under a great deal of pressure and there are often significant delays. For…
One of the issues I thought a great deal about during my time in Malawi is the issue of interventions in pregnancy and birth. Are interventions a bad thing? Are they good? As with many things in life, it all depends…. In the UK it has become widely accepted (and much debated) that hospital-based practice around birth tends to include…
Throughout human history, throughout the world, the majority of babies have been born at home. In the last few decades however, in many countries, hospital birth has been promoted as being “best”. So is hospital birth best? This is a question I discuss frequently in the UK, and it has been an increasing concern for me in Malawi. Since 2012…
The population in Malawi has grown at an astonishing rate in the last 10 years. There is a very important message that needs to be shared here – of family spacing and the use of contraception. The speed that the population is increasing is very problematic for such a poor country, not simply in terms of cash and service provision,…