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Postcard from Nepal   
CEDPA’s Senior Technical Advisor for Reproductive Health, Laurette Cucuzza, writes from Nepal where she is getting a new USAID-funded project started to increase family planning in the Terai region. Greetings from the hill country of Nepal! December 10, 2010 - I’m currently here leading CEDPA’s Increasing the Number of Well Planned Families project start up meeting. While at the meeting, I met a remarkable young woman named Amrita Sriwastav. Amrita is just 22 years old, but she stands out in this underdeveloped area of western Nepal. She is just finishing up her bachelor’s degree in public health, and she wrote her thesis on the knowledge, attitudes and practices in ante-natal care in her community of Gaur, Rautahat. Amrita will be helping to implement the project, which works with two local partner NGOs in two central Terai districts of Nepal to intensify a community-based approach to family planning. The project, funded by USAID, Nepal through Nepal Family Health Program II, will use community facilitators to reach underserved populations and counsel women and their families on the importance of family planning.Going with an integrated strategy, CEDPA will also train community facilitators to include HIV prevention messages where appropriate, offering dual protection. While a big undertaking, with women like Amrita at the helm, I know we’ll be able to see positive results. Working in the public health sector is in Amrtia’s blood, her father has been a public health worker for over 25 years. She has seen many things that inspired her to follow in his footsteps. For example, when she was living in Kathmandu her landlady died giving birth due to post-partum hemorrhage. She told me, “If a woman can die like that in Kathmandu, where people are educated and services are available, how many more women must be dying in the Terai! In Rautahat, they don’t go to hospital to give birth due to social stigma and cultural traditions, so many more women are dying.” Amrita is well informed about the situation in Nepal. While collecting the data for her thesis, she found that 80 percent of the women she talked to thought that pregnancy was up to God, not that they became pregnant through sex. “With those kinds of misconceptions, I am motivated to work to change behavior with this project!” she said. She already sees how the situation can improve. In her Village Development Committee there are 27 groups that have set up funds for women who are experiencing emergencies in pregnancy and childbirth. Women can access these funds to get transportation to the hospital, and then have 40 days to repay the costs. These funds have helped save the lives of many women and continue to ensure proper access. Amrita will be guiding, mentoring and monitoring the community facilitators as they work in their Village Development Committees. As Amrita prepares to work with the project, she will attend a two week training for community facilitators to better understand what they’re doing in the community. Amrita’s enthusiasm shines through when she talks about beginning work on the project and how she will share her knowledge beyond the project. “I want to learn more about family planning, so that I can talk to the ladies in my own village to make a positive point,” she says. |
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