Objective 4: Reduce infant mortality
Miriam Rouleau Perez 36 years old
Community organizer at CSSS Sud-Ouest-Verdun/Site CLSC St-Henri near Montreal
Presently in Carahuara de Carangas, Bolivia
Perez travelled to Bolivia with her spouse and two young children to work with the rural municipality of Curahuara de Carangas, in the high Andes plateaus, in July 2006. Her mandate is to support infant and maternal mortality prevention actions through the Aguayo project. "We've implemented a network of health stakeholders (the mayor and municipal councilors), traditional medicine stakeholders, midwives, traditional doctors, health professionals and indigenous leaders) that meet once a month," Perez explains. "Like any other joint effort, it needs to be supported. That's where I come in."
Since the Aguayo project's inception, a birthing room has been set up, traditional medicine has been made available and advances have been made in prenatal care and institutional deliveries. Doña Gregoria, a midwife with Curahuara de Carangas, says good changes are happening. "We're progressing well with the Aguayo project, coordinating with the health centre and also with the women so that they have safe deliveries. I feel good about it because the women feel good about it," she says.
Based on an assessment by the Health sector of the Municipality of Curahuara de Carangas, in 2006 barely 9 % of deliveries took place with professionals present while local and national maternal mortality statistics (the highest rate in Latin America) and the high infant mortality rate (also the highest in Latin America) created a health crisis for women and babies. After one year, the project has increased the number of institutional births fivefold and prevented risks in several cases; 84% of pregnant women in the municipality were provided medical resources.Awareness must be raised among modern biomedical health stakeholders about integrating traditional medicine to ensure the "well-being of the women and their newborns," Perez says.
“Right now I’m going through one of the most intense periods of my stay in Bolivia,” she says. “It will take years for me to fully absorb what I have experienced here — professionally and personally. The experience has been rich learning process and I am much wiser because of it.”
International Women’s Day is useful as it provides a yearly measure of the status of women, Perez observes. Women’s rights is a complex topic in intercultural exchange, she adds, and it must be approached with “respect and in a constructive way.”
Perez has learned a great deal from being a woman living in an Andean culture. The principle of “chacha-warmi”— the balance between men and women— is held in high cultural esteem. “We need to use ideas like these to encourage gender equality during development work in the high plateaus,” Perez says.
She will return to her work as a community organizer in St-Henri, Quebec, in July 2008.
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