Theresa Takafuma
Women from the Chipara area under Chief Makore in Gutu have lamented the lack of accessible maternity services as local health care centers do not have adequate facilities to cater for them.
Pregnant women end up walking long distances to access prenatal and antenatal care, as the available health centers are mostly private and unaffordable for the rural folk who have to part with certain amounts of money in order to be assisted by qualified midwives.
In an interview, Miriam Magoga, a woman from Chipara Village said they go to a private clinic at Guni, and have to pay maternity fees to be attended to, and the only other option is to trek to Cheshuro or Nerupiri Rural Health Centre which are very far away.
“To register your pregnancy you have to part with US$20, and when you go to deliver you then pay another US$15, which is hardly affordable for most of us. This then leads to women giving birth at home because the options are equally difficult.
“The other issue is that at the clinic there are no perinatal care services and for us to have our babies immunized we have to go to the nearest clinics like Nerupiri which is many kilometres away,” Magoga said.
Another woman, Jessica Matara, who recently gave birth at the private clinic at Guni said it was difficult to access water when she went to give birth there, and people had to walk about 5km to fetch water for her to use.
“The challenge at the clinic is water and people had to walk nearly 5km to access water. The other problem is that you have to buy your own injections. After giving birth you are told to go to Cheshuro Rural Health Centre which is over 20km away and you can imagine how it is for a woman who has just given birth.
Hilda Chipara, from the same area said local clinics do not assist first time mothers, those with pregnancy complications and women who have had multiple births.
She said for first time mothers in the area it then becomes difficult especially if they do not have money, making them vulnerable to birth complications, birth injuries, even deaths.
“Our local clinics do not accept mhandatsva (new mothers) and that leaves them with little to no option but to resort to home births. At Cheshuro they do that because they say if you have complications they do not have transport to ferry you to a bigger hospital.
“They also do not have waiting homes so it then becomes difficult if a woman gets into labour to walk all the way to the health center in that condition, as there is no transport,” Chipara said.
