Making the world a better place
Girl Scout Troop 2270--Front row from left: Zariyah Murray, Isabella Bennett, Reagan Bird, Jenna Notaro. Second row: Annikki Murray, Madelyn Smith, Jordan Musgrove, Roxy Blocksdorf, Vivian Borbash
By Ann LoLordo
Make the world a better place. That’s the penultimate line of the Girl Scout Law and two Baltimore troops are helping to do just that by making mother-child bracelets to benefit women around the world including earthquake victims in Haiti.
The girls — fourth and fifth graders from Troop 2270 in South Baltimore and Troop 7406 from Barclay Elementary/Middle School – are participating in a community service project in cooperation with Jhpiego, a global health non-profit that works in more than 40 countries including Haiti.
The bracelets of green and blue thread – Jhpiego’s colors — feature two white beads. “The big bead represents the mother and the little bead represents the baby,” explained Madelyn Smith, 10, of Troop 2270.
Jhpiego’s mission is to prevent the needless deaths of women and their families; improving maternal and child health is a primary focus of its work. During the recent earthquake in Haiti, Jhpiego health care workers helped reestablish services for pregnant women and newborns at the main hospital in Port-au-Prince. Its work there continues; more than 7,000 pregnant women were expected to give birth in the month following the devastating earthquake, according to UN estimates.
“We strongly believe that women should not have to die giving life, and we dedicate ourselves to making that a reality,” says Jhpiego CEO Leslie Mancuso. “The Girl Scouts’ involvement in this project is one small way to help ensure that pregnant women in Haiti and elsewhere have the services they need to deliver their babies safely.”
Melody McCoy, Jhpiego’s Director of Communications and External Relations, and Mary Kay Carver, Corporate Conference Coordinator, designed the bracelets and approached the Girl Scouts about involving their girls in the project.
“The bracelets stem from a touching Indian tradition in which a person gives a ‘Rakhi’ bracelet to a loved one as a symbol of their commitment to care for and protect them,” said Ms. McCoy. “We wanted to share this with all Jhpiego’s friends around the world, in our shared commitment to saving women’s lives. The work the Girls Scouts are doing locally will help spread the message globally that we care about women’s health.”
The project fit with the Girl Scouts’ mission, said Lisa Bird, a flavor chemist at McCormick and Company who leads the South Baltimore troop with Nikki Massie. In reciting the Girl Scout promise, scouts commit “to help people at all times” and “live by the Girl Scout Law,” which includes the imperative “to make the world a better place,” she said.
Crafting the bracelets was a fun way to put the pledge into practice, while reinforcing the values and principles that the organization wants to encourage in young women, Ms. Bird said.
“I felt it was going to help people and make the world a better place,’’ said Reagan Bird, a member of the South Baltimore troop who joined her fellow scouts in stringing the beaded bracelets at a recent meeting.
The girls were familiar with Haiti because they had talked about the massive earthquake that struck in January and they attended a recent event for World Thinking Day in which Haiti was represented, Ms. Bird said.
Troop leaders also shared a story about a sister scout in Haiti – they are known there as Girl Guides – whose house was destroyed in the earthquake. As the young woman fled her home, she grabbed some basic necessities — and her Girl Guide uniform, said Ms. Bird.
At Barclay Elementary/Middle School Thursday, Rose Mason introduced eight scouts from Troop 7406 to the community service project that she hoped would be fun and meaningful. Ms. Mason oversees the three girl scout troops that are led by Hopkins students including Laura Bartos,Victoria Bata and Christine Asaro.
“We try to do community service whenever we can,” said Ms. Mason, 20, of Chicago. “We like to teach the girls that there is large world beyond their own and in that world there are people who aren’t as well off as they are and may need their help . . . . We want to show them that they have the power to help in any way possible.”
The mother-child bracelets will be sold for $1 with the proceeds dedicated to supporting Jhpiego’s work in maternal and child health. Women in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince remain vulnerable because the earthquake destroyed so much of the housing. Thousands of families are homeless and living in tents on the street as the spring rains approach. The threat of disease remains ever present.
Add comment February 25, 2010
Interview with Jhpiego’s Dr. Jean Anderson, director of the Johns Hopkins HIV Women’s Health Program and editor of A Guide to the Clinical Care of Women with HIV:
Can you explain the risk of transmitting HIV from mother to child as it exists today?
The risk of transmitting HIV from mother to child in the absence of any interventions ranges from about 25 to 45 percent. It tends to be a little higher in low-resource areas because of the increased contribution of breastfeeding. That’s without any intervention. I think it’s important to know that it’s not 100 percent, which a lot of people think it is.
In developed countries, the risk has been decreased to generally around 2 percent or less with current practices. That’s primarily because of antiretroviral therapy, avoidance of breastfeeding and, in certain circumstances, the use of Cesarean section.
1 comment February 24, 2010
HIV mothers support group changes lives
By Berhane Fekade and Meaza Getahun
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — When Meseret Million got the news, she thought her life was over. She wept for her children and feared for her husband. He too could become ill and her precious babies would be orphaned because of a virus too controversial to name.
1 comment February 22, 2010
In Angola clinic, a prevention program with solid results
Dr. Emilia Angola is one of two doctors working with HIV-positive women in a health clinic in Samba, an area outside Luanda, the capital of Angola. She runs a program to help prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child. Through counseling, testing and a menu of antiretroviral medications, pregnant women can help protect their unborn babies from getting the virus. Dr. Angola’s “biggest satisfaction” comes from seeing an HIV-positive mother give birth to a child who is negative for the virus. Of 115 children treated in her clinic since June 2008, only two have tested positive for the virus. “I feel very happy,” she says.
Add comment February 21, 2010
All in a day’s work
By Ann LoLordo
PRIDE-Jhpiego in Pakistan helps women deliver babies safely.
It was a busy morning in the maternity ward at the King Abdullah Teaching Hospital in Mansehra, Pakistan. A regional hospital in a rural northern corner of the country, the facility had admitted several pregnant women in need of emergency obstetric care. One was in premature labor and bleeding.
Add comment February 20, 2010
Jhpiego doctors in Haiti make the difference in life of newborn
The e-mail arrived in Baltimore with the headline: “Emmanuelle bébé precieux.”
Jhpiego’s staff in Haiti had good news to report today. A pregnant woman arrived at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince with serious complications. She was 37 weeks and bleeding. This was her first pregnancy and she appeared to be about 45 years old.
Add comment February 5, 2010
Jhpiego Team Leaves Haiti; Health Services for Pregnant Women Improve Day by Day
After a grueling mission to Haiti to help restore quality health services for pregnant women and newborns, Jhpiego’s Anne Pfitzer sat in the airport in Santa Domingo, typing up minutes from a work meeting on reproductive health and reflecting on an extraordinary 10 days in the earthquake-ravaged country.
The flight to Baltimore would leave soon.
Add comment February 3, 2010
On Debussy Street: Aftershocks Remain A Worry
Dr. Lucito Jeannis of Jhpiego talks with a patient at the recently reopened maternity ward at General Hospital in Port-au-Prince and also confers with staff.
Today is Day 18 since the earthquake struck Haiti. Lucito Jeannis and his family still haven’t slept in their house on Debussy Street. He remains encamped outside his home, with his wife, 3-year-old son and a multitude of neighbors; aftershocks are still a concern. In the beginning Jeannis was providing for 17 people and then 22, including two brothers, 15 and 10, whose father died in the January 12 quake.
Add comment January 29, 2010
Jhpiego Team Supports Maternity Patients
Administrators at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince thank Jhpiego's Dr. Lucito Jeannis, Haiti Country Director, for the organization's support in reopening the maternity ward there.
They arrive first thing in the morning at the General Hospital and meet with nurse Marlene Gourdet who is organizing and overseeing the re-opening of the maternity ward, and offer to help.
Jhpiego’s Willy Shasha, an obstetrician, assembles an autoclave acquired by Jhpiego from UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) and makes sure this critical piece of sterilization equipment is ready to go. “Such equipment is essential for this high level referral center, which needs to care for the most critical cases,’’ says Shasha.
Baltimore colleagues Rich Lamporte and Anne Pfitzer also get to work. Lamporte puts on a pair of scrub gloves and demonstrates purifying gallons of water for the sterlization process, using a donation of Pur water tablets from Proctor & Gamble.
Pfitzer prepares nutritional supplements for pregnant women and later volunteers to hand-write health records when patients arrive.
Dr. Jean Bernard Fevrier, a Jhpiego employee in the Haiti office, is giving prenatal care and gynecological exams to women who arrive at the maternity building. He is helped by Haiti Country Director, Dr. Lucito Jeannis, and Marie Jacqueline Jean, a nurse on Jhpiego’s Haiti staff. The team is encouraged that women feel confident to seek help indoors after the earthquake and subsequent tremors.
In all, the Jhpiego team sees 16 patients today.
“It was a gift not to get hurt in the quake. It warms me inside to help my people,” says Fevrier.
Jhpiego is supporting the hospital’s “return to work” effort so the maternity ward can operate with a complement of doctors, nurses, and midwives trained in obstetrics care. Until now, pregnant women brought to General Hospital were delivering their babies in tents on the hospital grounds; a small contingent of overworked nurses and birth attendants were providing care.
Madame Gourdet, as she is known at the hospital, estimates tent temperatures hit 100 degrees. Patients in the tents complained of constant thirst and staff had to leave their posts to search for water.
Add comment January 27, 2010
Madame Gourdet wouldn’t take no for an answer.
She is the chief nurse overseeing women who give birth in Port-au-Prince’s largest hospital. The conditions for pregnant women and newborns at General Hospital had so upset Marlene Gourdet (everyone calls her Madame) that she was determined to reopen the maternity ward today.
Some co-workers and others have been reluctant to enter the building in spite of five safety inspections by the U.S. military that found the building to be structurally sound for use. A tremor after the initial earthquake sent people running from the hospital and some who saw them flee have remained fearful despite the inspections.
Patients are being treated in tents on the hospital grounds. But Madame Gourdet believes that women in labor, new mothers and their babies aren’t receiving the care they deserve because medical facilities are overwhelmed by patients with trauma injuries.
When Madame Gourdet meets Jhpiego’s Willy Shasha, an ob/gyn, outside the hospital gates, the feisty nurse realizes she has an ally. He is working with his Haitian colleagues in the Jhpiego office in Port-au-Prince to reestablish maternal and newborn health services at the hospital, the main referral facility in the capital, and ensure pregnant women, mothers and newborns are properly cared for as Haiti copes with thousands of injured quake victims.
Madame Gourdet marches Dr. Lucito Jeannis, Jhpiego’s Haiti Country Director, and Dr. Shasha, who came to work with Jhpiego’s Haiti staff on a recovery plan, into the surgical tent where staff are performing emergency Cesarean sections and other major operations. “Can people work in these conditions? Dirt under their feet and in a tent?” she asks. “There is a building next door.”
Today, Madame Gourdet, other hospital staff and Jhpiego’s team – Doctors Jeannis and Shasha, Nurse Marie Jacqueline Jean, Baltimoreans Rich Lamporte and Anne Pfitzer –- return to the building for the first time to start cleaning, organizing and preparing for a resumption of maternal services.
“Most important, we will now have three operating rooms with minimum standards to prevent infection, which is difficult to control in tents. We also have a sense of renewal, a sense of pride to get back to essential services,” says Dr. Thierry LaPlanche, a Haitian medical resident who has been tending to patients in the tents until now.
“A lot of people across the hospital are watching us, watching the leadership of the maternity to recover services for the long term.”
“I just want things to return to normal”, adds maternity nurse Francois Francoinise.
For Madame Gourdet, re-opening the maternity ward in the hospital means delivering care safely, in a sanitary environment and with dignity. She understands why the tents were necessary — tremors have rattled the capital since the first quake hit two weeks ago. But she also knows that it is urgent to re-establish the quality and level of health care with improved facilities and enhanced infection prevention.
Jhpiego’s team knows this too –– the organization has worked in Haiti for 15 years to help Haitian health care professionals strengthen emergency obstetric care, infection prevention, family planning and HIV/AIDS programs. But the Jhpiego team recognizes that the pace of recovery will depend on the commitment of Haitians like Madame Gourdet to move the effort forward. Gourdet participated in a 2005 Jhpiego training on prevention of HIV/AIDS transmissions from mother to child.
“She is strong and gets the maternity staff to work,” says Jean, a reproductive health advisor in the Jhpiego Haiti office. “Sometimes they complain, but know they can count on her. She has a kind heart. If she was not strong, she would not remain head of the ward.”
As 30 to 45 cartons of supplies arrive from UNFPA to restock General Hospital’s maternity ward, Madame Gourdet wastes little time rallying a group of Haitians to begin moving the boxes into the facility. Jhpiego was instrumental in getting the supplies delivered.
“She is a passionate advocate for women too easily forgotten in the stress of these times,’’ says Shasha.
Madame Gourdet and her Jhpiego allies want to make certain that this huge relief effort creates even better services for mothers and babies.
Add comment January 26, 2010
