Special Delivery! Village Ambulance Coming Through

“Will I be able to make it to the health center before my baby is born?”  Agnes Loucho found herself asking this question recently, a rare one for Karimojong women typically forced to give birth at home, at great risk to their health.  Over the last several months of her pregnancy, Agnes had grown increasingly excited about meeting her new baby but also anxious that the delivery go smoothly.  Agnes had learned all about the importance of delivering in a health facility through the Samaritan’s Purse Maternal Child Health project, Erot Ngolo Kitete, which means “The New Way” in the local language.  In Karamoja, Chrissy has focused on Erot Ngolo Kitete and managed the launch of the Village Ambulance initiative.  She recently spent a day in the field hearing of its early impact from grateful women such as Agnes.

In embracing the project’s mantra of adopting a “new way” of life, Agnes had attended antenatal care services at the local health center and, in doing so, had learned from the nurses that the baby had a large head which could make delivery at home very dangerous.  These thoughts flooded into Agnes’s mind that morning when she woke up feeling contractions in her belly.  Her baby was ready to make his entrance into the world – but would Agnes be able to ensure he arrived safely by getting to the health facility?  She considered her options: she could give birth at home or she could find a friend with a wheelbarrow who would be willing to push her to the health facility.  Unsure of what to do, Agnes called her friend Alfreda for advice as she knew Alfreda worked for Samaritan’s Purse’s Maternal Child Health project and would know what to do.

Sure enough, Alfreda quickly arrived at the house with a plan of how to get Agnes to the health center using the new Samaritan’s Purse Village Ambulance.  The Village Ambulance, a trailer that can be attached to a bicycle or motorcycle, would allow Agnes to rest comfortably on a mattress and under a protective canopy while being pulled to the health center.  Though the Village Ambulance had been given to the community just one week prior, Alfreda knew that it would provide safe, comfortable, and fast transport to the health center for pregnant women in labor or critically ill patients.  In a region of Uganda where 82% of women deliver their babies at home, often times because they do not have a way to get to the health facility when labor begins, the communities that received Village Ambulances from Samaritan’s Purse saw the donation as a true answer to prayer.  And, thanks to the education provided through Samaritan’s Purse’s Maternal Child Health project, women now understand how dangerous it can be to deliver a baby at home, without the help of a nurse or doctor.

Thanks to Alfreda’s quick thinking and the Samaritan’s Purse Village Ambulance, Agnes arrived at the health center with just minutes to spare before her baby son was born.  Since she gave birth at the health facility, nurses provided Agnes with vitamins and treated her for the damage her body had sustained in giving birth.  Agnes’s baby boy was bathed, weighed, and given a clean bill of health.  Agnes, now back at home and adjusting to her life as a new mom, often reflects back on her trip in the Village Ambulance.  “It was a comfortable ride and a good way to get to the health center quickly.”  Without the Village Ambulance, Agnes knows she would have been forced to deliver her baby at home without sterile conditions as many women throughout Karamoja are forced to do every day.  As her friend Alfreda reports, “I wish that there were more Village Ambulances so that all women would have a way of getting to the health center when they are in labor.”

The Village Ambulance program is only the latest manifestation of God’s love and resources touching the hurting people of Karamoja, meeting their needs and charting “a new way” for this challenged region of Uganda.

SNAPSHOTS OF AFRICA