Potential Role of Traditional Birth Attendants in Postpartum and Newborn Care

Objective:

To gain an understanding of competency based training of TBAs and its effect on both maternal postpartum and new-born care. To investigate the factors that influence the training programs in different cultures with a focus on a rural Angolan district.

Design:

The research paper is a descriptive study in which mixed methods have been used. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques are used in this research.

Setting:

Remote and cultural areas of a rural Angolan district.

Participants:

150 participants will be involved in the research study, and will be divided into three groups.

Introduction:

The training of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) plays an important and critical role in maternal health and care. The role of the traditional birth attendant is an institution which has evolved since the earliest of times and has continued into the present. (Kama, 1998). In 1984 in the countries of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, there was observed, a decline in the infant mortality rate when births were attended by TBAs who received training. It is important to consider whether the training of TBAs reduced the rate of postpartum RTIs (these should be written in full once, the first time, after that it is o.k. to put RTI…whatever it is). that are caused by vaginal or other microorganisms. Early detection of the RTIs helps in early treatment of the infections which in turn minimize or prevent some major complications (Germain, Holmes & Piot, 1992).

The World Health Organization (WHO) has emphasized the importance of TBAs in maternal health and child care in the third world countries. However, in countries such as Angola no proper training is provided to the TBAs, and this leads to a failure to perform their ...

... middle of paper ...

...esearch.

Discussion and future implications:

One of the limitations in this type of method might be the difficulty of seeing any real trends or patterns in the society due to some cultural and traditional barriers. In the future, researchers who are interested in the study might concentrate more on the data collection by interviewing people living in the district. Initially however, the interviews will be of just a sample of twenty TBAs which means that it will be harder to generalize the findings to the population since twenty people is a relatively small number. However, one can always compensate for the small amount of cases by saying something along the lines of “Based on the initial sample twenty interviews, it was revealed that …” This shows an awareness that it may be risky to generalize the initial sample findings to the general population.