Busfare Babies Birth Centre

I am Karen Clark, my Xhosa name is Nomzamo, I am 52 years old. My family comes from Cathcart, Eastern Cape, but I was born in Durban and grew up in Pietermaritzburg, Kwa Zulu Natal. I studied Nursing and Midwifery at Carinus Nursing College in Cape Town and qualified as a Nurse and Midwife in 1994, I worked in the U.K for 4 years as a nurse, worked in Khayelitsha at Michael Mapangwana MOU as a mid

wife and studied a further 18 months to obtain a diploma in Advanced Midwifery through Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland. I then worked a further 2 years in London hospitals as a midwife. I have been working as an independent midwife for 20+ years. The idea of building a rural Birth Centre first came to me in 1993 whilst I was working in Khayelitsha and Guguletu as a student midwife, and it has been in the planning phase ever since. Whilst working in the overcrowded informal settlement, I was struck by how many women moved to the city in order to have their babies. Many of these women came from the rural areas, were very young and had had very little antenatal care during their pregnancies and little or no support through their labours, births and as they became mothers living in overcrowded circumstances. Having worked in many different hospitals both in South Africa and in the UK I am well aware of the type of experience birth can be in an institution, I believe we can offer excellent care without excessive cost to rural women and with this purpose have started this birth centre. Nomvula assists at the birth house. We have built a new Birth House next to Nomvula’s home. She and I assist during the labour and birth and Nomvula stays with the woman and her baby at the birth house for the duration of her stay, cooking for her and teaching her the basics of mothering a new baby. Having had 6 of her own children, including twins, she is very well qualified. Access to medical facilities in pregnancy and birth is severely restricted by poverty and the inability to travel to sites offering care. Although ambulances do travel to these areas, there can be a 5-6 hour wait for the ambulance to arrive. Such long waiting intervals are a danger to mother and baby at birth.