Hasna Muktar, a traditional birth attendant in remote Sankuri village in northern Kenya, has met her share of challenges while delivering babies, from snakebite and threatening hyenas to the choking fumes of kerosene lamps that are widely used to provide a feeble light at night-time deliveries.
But that last problem, at least, is now being overcome, thanks to the installation of solar panels and bright, low-energy LED lights.
The lack of power in the past meant Muktar had to use a kerosene lamp at night to attend to births and other emergencies, and to wind her way through the bush and along village paths to home, facing dangers such as snake bites, attack by hyenas and stepping on thorn trees used for fencing.
‘’For 25 years I have been using kerosene lamps and sometime bright lights from the moon. I have been bitten three times by snakes and that affected my work and inconvenienced many pregnant women in Sankuri village,” she said.
As well, “the kerosene lamp made health problems both to me and mothers with their newborn babies. I have contracted respiratory infections on various occasions and also the use of moonlight is quite tricky as I have to conduct deliveries in the open air. I use moonlight only when kerosene is out of stock or when I contract respiratory sickness,‘’ she said.
But now Muktar and other traditional birth attendants have less to worry about after receiving portable solar LED lamps and solar panels to charge them from Pajan Kenya, a local non-governmental group backed by international NGO Afri-Ireland.
The system, which has been delivered to 30 traditional birth attendants, takes five hours of sunshine to charge lamps that then last as long as 12 hours.
The lamps are used by the birth attendants to attend to women at night, and also during women’s education sessions where a traditional attendant congregates more than 20 pregnant women at her compound to go through family planning and behavioural change education.
Solar lamps reduce childbirth risks in remote northern Kenya - AlertNet
