Granny Midwives and Aiding Birth in Liberia | Marcia Stevens

Today we talk with Marcia Stevens, a practicing nurse and midwife in Liberia. She runs a healthcare clinic out of her front yard to serve the health needs of her community and to provide a safe birthing space for women in need. She comes from a line of traditional midwives and is passionate about preserving those traditions while also providing access to quality care for the people who need it.

We talk about how Marcia got her start into midwifery and nursing and her experience assisting her grandmother with births when she was growing up. We discuss birth in Liberia and how the economic conditions affect the ability of mothers to birth in healthcare facilities. We talk about the training process for traditional birth assistants, or "granny" midwives in Liberia, including their unique skill and the challenges they face.

We discuss the most important tools for rural midwives to have to help make births safer. We brush on how difficult it is for health care workers who aren't provided those crucial tools. We talk about "humanitarian tourism" and the problem of the help provided by Non Government Organizations (NGOs) not being implemented into the community going forward, as well as how it could be done better.

We talk about the financial burden on private health facilities because government facilities are not free to citizens. Marcia tells the story of how she was able to give birth in the U.S. and learn some techniques from U.S. midwives during her time. Then we talk about how relationships can be formed between birth workers in the U.S. and Liberia to help set up more sustainable aid for Liberian midwives and health workers. We talk about how the main disparity between the quality of birth care in the U.S. and Liberia is caused only by a lack of proper equipment and not a lack of knowledge.

Finally, Marcia shares some stories from her birth practice of mothers with difficult births who she was able to help. We talk again about how NGOs can better help form lasting connections with the birth professionals they bring aid to so that the resource will not fizzle out. Marcia lets us know what Liberian midwives are most in need of, and how to get them to the people who need them the most.

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