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Phase Them In film shows need for traditional birth attendants
A Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) attends to expectant mothers in a rural setting. Sarah Nsigaye’s documentary Phase Them In highlights the need of services provided by TBAs. The filmmaker (R) believes the government should train TBAs and give them proper facilities.
The Ministry of Health intends to eliminate Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) on grounds that they are incompetent and are one of the causes of child and maternal mortality. However, a health documentary that Sarah Nsigaye, 34, is putting final touches on, intends to disprove this. Her work emphasises that TBAs are important, say, in rural areas where women leave far away from hospitals, and cannot reach the hospitals in time. It is against this background that she has called her film Phase Them In.
“Government is saying that they lead to mortality and they don’t have experience, but this is someone who has been doing it since they were young and now they are old people,” she says.
In her film, women are saying that when they go to hospitals they are harshly treated. But TBAs are said to give good care and some of them, by touching the woman’s womb, can tell what sex the baby is. This is credited to the experience that these women have.
On September 15, she will be travelling to do more filming in Zambia where the government is closely working with TBAs. “The Zambian government has worked with the TBAs because you can’t do away with them. You just make them accountable. That is why I am travelling there to find out how the government there did it,” Nsigaye says.
She adds that much as the government is planning to phase them out, it is a reality that we have them, and we have had them long before the modern hospitals were here. “I think the government should train them and give them the proper facilities, but not phasing them out,” she says.
While shooting the documentary, she has discovered that much as the government plans to phase out TBAs, some of the modern hospitals sometimes cannot accommodate all the numbers. The other issue worth noting is that there are not enough midwives in the hospitals, so TBAs come in handy.
“People have a lot of trust in them. They speak and treat women nicely which some modern midwives don’t, but their challenge is that they don’t have the equipment,” she says. She adds that the Traditional Birth Attendants charge a smaller fee compared to their counterparts.
Disadvantages
But she is quick to acknowledge the shortcoming of the TBAs. “For instance, if a child had HIV/Aids, Traditional Birth Attendants don’t know how to go about that,” she says. Her biggest worry is; “If TBAs start working in secrecy, they will kill more mothers.” She adds that it is modern hospitals with most maternal deaths. Nsigaye has been supported by Ethiopian Airlines who have given her a ticket to fly to Zambia. She hopes to use the documentary to influence decision makers change their minds on Traditional Birth Attendants.
Background
Nsigaye is a documentary filmmaker. She works with Amakula cultural foundation and Cinemarena, an organisation that uses film to educate people about topical issues like health, environment and others.
Recently she was asked by Dsw a Germany organisation that deals with population and health issues to do a video on reproductive health. “As I did my research, I found out that they wanted to phase out TBAs yet the doctor-patient ration is one to 20,000 people and most of these doctors are based in urban areas, while the largest population of Uganda is in rural areas. That’s how I decided to concentrate on TBAs,” she says.
