Parvati, a Midwife Trainer in Kampong Cham
"Being able to help people is indeed very satisfying."
"My name is Parvati G. Sharma. I am a UNV Midwife
Trainer from Bhutan. I've been working in Kampong Cham province,
a couple hours drive north of Phnom Penh, since June 2001. I
am working with the Ministry of Health to provide training to
health personnel on midwifery skills as part of the Birth Spacing
and Safe Motherhood project funded by UNFPA.
Cambodia's health indicators are among the lowest in the region.
One in eight Cambodian children will die before their fifth
birthday. The maternal mortality rate averages 473 deaths per
100,000 live births. To compound to these facts is the reality
that only one third of all births take place in a health facility
with trained medical personnel present.
This means that very few women receive the care of trained health
workers during pregnancy and delivery. Before this project,
no new midwives had been trained since 1996. This makes for
a challenging work environment, but I enjoy this opportunity
to assist with the Mother and Child Healthcare related training
that is so necessary here and to have the opportunity to share
my learning. Being able to help people is indeed very satisfying.
At the Kampong Cham Regional Training Centre, I work closely
with a team of five midwives who are all hard working and eager
to learn. I help coach and evaluate classroom and clinical trainers
on modern training technologies with the use of audio visual
aids, and help identify their further training needs.
Also as part of my responsibilities, I travel often throughout
the four provinces that the Centre services: Kampong Cham, Prey
Veng, Kratie and Kampong Thom. I especially enjoy these follow-up
visits to health centres, hospitals and community sites where
graduates from our courses are placed. Traveling across the
bumpy and dusty roads through the countryside, sometimes on
the back of a motorbike and sometimes on a boat during flood
season is challenging and worth all the bumps along the way.
In fact, it makes me feel younger and healthy! When I arrive
at the sites, it is wonderful to meet my old students again
and to see them using their knowledge and skills gained during
training. I talk with them about their progress, and any further
training needs they may be in need of in order to further improve
the safe motherhood activities.
Working with very supportive supervisors, my training advisor,
host agencies, wonderful counterparts and the UNV family has
made my mission here very easy. Of course, sometimes I experience
frustrations like when I cannot communicate fully, or when the
equipment breaks down, etc. but these are some of the normal
daily life affairs. I am thoroughly enjoying being able to work
in Cambodia." |
