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Community Health Worker makes her mark as midwife
Once a pregnant woman is certain that she is ready to deliver, her next decision would be to contact
Esther Charles
Esther Charles. Charles’ popularity is widespread throughout the Amerindian Community of Mashabo, mainly because she is the only person in her Community who has been delivering babies for the last 28 years. She has been rated good at what she does.
Charles learnt the art of delivering babies outside of the hospital setting after she would accompany her mother, 74-year-old Rita Abrams, who operated as a midwife in Mashabo many years ago.
Charles learnt by mere observation and gradually developed her skills over the years. She herself started to do house to house deliveries as a young woman until her quality of work gained recognition by Health workers, at the Suddie Public Hospital. She eventually landed a job as a Community Health Worker.
“When I see some of the children in my Community that I would have delivered, I does tell their parents to take care of my grandchildren for me.”
Charles, 54, said that whenever she is not looking out for the children she would have delivered, she usually renders assistance to them in the best possible form she can. Sometimes that help would come in the form of steering that child in the right direction with good advice.
When Charles was a 23-year-old woman, she was afforded an opportunity to attend a workshop at the Suddie Public Hospital, her first of many. That opportunity arose after a senior doctor attached to the Suddie Public Hospital recognized the successful deliveries that she (Charles) had performed in Mashabo.
Transportation costs, Charles said, was way too costly for women to venture out of Mashabo to go to the Suddie Public Hospital to deliver their babies. A Health Post was needed. That facility was constructed several years ago and has assisted pregnant mothers from having the hassle to go to Suddie to do deliveries.
With her prominence, operating as a Community Health Officer, Charles said pregnant mothers now have a safe place to deliver. Difficult cases, which Charles said are few, would be referred to the Suddie Public Hospital.
The mother of seven said that she once had to walk out of Mashabo to get to the Huis t’ Dieren Health Center where she worked previously. Charles also did domestic work before operating fully as a trained Community Health Worker.
Over the years, the Community has been equipped with a Health Post and families owning their own boats now have an improved life. Things are less stressful, Charles said.
Charles who would retire in November is uncertain whether she would be re-hired on contract by the Region Two Administration. Acknowledging that she wouldn’t be able to operate independently either, she said that she would probably operate a grocery shop and plant a kitchen garden to continue to earn.
The midwife admitted that she is fortunate to have acquired a skill which is now sustaining herself and family. She said that a lot of young women in Mashabo do not know to read and write and this issue needs to change in order for growth of her people to occur.
She is encouraging young people to educate themselves since a sound education can rescue one from poverty. (By Yannason Duncan).
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