What one man can do, the birthing hole

Eighteen kilometres north of Tamale, the farmers earn 50 cents a day. Here there has traditionally been a high infant and maternal mortality rate until a young physician introduced a local custom into the hospital. He noticed the pregnant mothers were not attending the prenatal clinic nor choosing to deliver in the hospital. He also learned that there was an unpleasant nurse who was working there. The nurse was eventually fired, but still the pregnant mothers did not come. When the physician visited their homes, he discovered that the women deliver while squatting over a “birthing hole” in the floor. The birthing hole is the size of a basketball, flush with the floor. He then decided to place birthing holes in the hospital delivery room and the woman now come, resulting in a great reduction in maternal and infant mortality.


He also eliminated their custom of dealing with malnourished children who were thought to be punishments from God. The mother would steal away to the forest with the malnourished infant in a shawl on her back, run and loosen the shawl, allowing the baby to fall to the ground. The woman would then return running to the village, not looking back for she believed if she did so, her next child would also be malnourished. A malnutrition center was built to care for these children and it was made to resemble the village’s own compounds. The women were amazed at the resulting weight gain and improved health of the malnourished children. They have come to understand that help is available and now bring their malnourished infants into the malnutrition center, no longer leaving them to die in the forest.