The curse of being new mothers
Dharma Budha of Wai village of Bajura district gave birth to a baby three weeks ago inside a cowshed. She will stay in the dark, windowless outhouse with the cattle for another week.
Her neighbour Surindra Kathayat was taken to a health post when she went into labour, but after she gave birth was banished to a cowshed with her baby.
"There are 300 families living in Wai. Five women gave birth this month, and all five are living in cowsheds with their cattle," says village leader Jandevi Budha, without much indication that she thinks this is unsafe for mothers and newborns.
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Nandasara Sarki of nearby Bandhu village gave birth to her fifth child, and like all the other babies this one was also delivered in an outhouse. Two of her earlier babies died due to the cold and damp within a week of being born.
Sarki's husband thinks the gods will be angry if a mother is allowed into the house with her newborn baby – a superstition that is entrenched throughout conservative northeastern Bajura, where female literacy is low and there are few health facilities.
Female Community Health Volunteer (FCHV) Chandrakala Budha says such banishment is the cause of most postnatal and even maternal mortality death, with babies dying of exposure and infections. Staff nurse Mandevi Jaisi at Bajura District Hospital says most mothers end up with health problems like uterus issues, anaemia, night blindness and infections in the mouth and tongue.
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Dhan Bahadur Fadera, the health assistant at Rugin Health Post, says that the plight of women in Humla, Mugu, Jumla, Kalikot and Dolpa districts of northwestern Nepal is the same. "I estimate that 80% of the women here deliver their babies in cowsheds, which is why the infant and maternal mortality rates have not gone down like in the rest of the country,” says Fadera, who has worked all over Karnali Province.
Chinkala Chadara of Hyanglu village of Mugu delivered her baby in her cowshed this month despite living next door to a health post. "We do not go to health posts; none of the women I know are taken there," she says simply. Even if the mothers deliver in a health facility, they have to go to the shed when they come home with the baby.
"We tell them that it is not right to stay in cowsheds, but they don't listen to us," says Chiranjivi Shahi, head of Swamikartik Khapar Rural Municipality.
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Most women believe the superstition that they are impure after menstruation or childbirth, and prefer not to bring down the wrath of the gods on their families. Dhanrupa Jaisi of Maila village of Humla says the rules are very strict: no nutritious milk or meat, no comforts no touching the public tap. But there is no taboo on working in the fields, so the new mothers are also overworked. By the time they leave the shed after a month, both mother and baby are malnourished, or have infections.
In Dhim village of Bajura, Rela Rokaya's newborn baby passed away in a shed this month. Dudhari Dhami of Maila village has given birth to three children, two of whom died in the cowshed. District Health Office records show that there were about 20 infant deaths in Bajura in the past year, most of them in cowsheds within 28 days of birth. Health Assistant Yadav believes the number is vastly underestimated, since many deaths are unreported.
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