The “Silk Home”
Maternity Waiting Homes – Centres for education, training and safe delivery
Executive summary
“The Silk Homes” are multi-function centres for information, education and safe delivery, particularly for women coming from remote mountain areas of Laos, where medical services are not available.
The project plans to build one Maternity Waiting Home (MWH) - or a “Silk Home” - in each of the 17 districts of the Provinces of Saravan, Sekong and Attapeu, characterized by people living in remote areas, at the border with Viet Nam and Cambodia, where Maternal and Infant Morbidity and Mortality Rates (MMR & IMR) as well as poverty are particularly high.
The MWHs - already introduced in other developing and developed countries as well as in Lao PDR under a pilot project, - are part of the MOH strategy in order to improve access to health facilities and medical care for Mothers and Children living in remote and economically disadvantaged areas. The main local counterparts of the project are the Lao MOH, the local Provincial and District Health and Political Authorities.
The main objective of the project of the “Silk Home” is the reduction of Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) & Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), by providing immediate medical care, (deworming) education and motivation on preventing services (e.g. FP, Immunization, Iron &folic acid, food supplements, mosquito nets) and access, if required, to adequate obstetric services during the delivery. The more general objective is the improvement of health in communities living in remote and isolated mountains, by integrating various health programmes with economic interventions and small Income Generating Activities (IGA), granting micro credits, facilitating marketing of local products and by organizing training and health education courses for mothers and their family members attending the “Home”.
At district level the project will integrate various initiatives and programmes to improve the health of mothers and children. These will include the establishment of the Community Based Health Insurance (CBHI), in order to contribute to health financing, sustainability and easy economic access to health care. Attention will focus on the improvement of the economic situation of women and their families, through practical training courses geared to improve the quality and expand the variety of existing handicrafts, including silk and cotton weaving, for their possible marketing.
In view of the above, the “Silk Home” represents not only a centre where women can be accommodated and receive proper medical attention during the last period of the reproductive process, but also a centre where they can learn how to increase their income, by improving their handicraft production, or farming skills or by establishing small scale business through micro credits.
In order to accomplish the above, the “Silk Homes” will also be a working place, provided with appropriate equipment, such as sewing machines, embroidery, weaving looms, facilities for dyeing silk, production of “terracotta”, and similar activities already familiar to village women. Each ”Silk Home” will also have a piece of land devoted to demonstration kitchen gardens and small animal rearing. By working in the garden women and their family members will learn appropriate technologies, such as composting and fertilizing, which will be useful for their food production and food security once back at home, along with the required simple gardening tools and cooking utensils, granted by the project. Immediate breastfeeding, nutrition education, food safety, basic principles of hygiene, prevention of malaria, immunization and family planning will be major subjects of discussion during the delivery waiting period.
It is anticipated that, in 2 years of operation, approximately 8-10,000 women will have utilized the 17 “Silk Homes” and have benefited from the learning and practical activities attended during the waiting period.
The total project fund, granted by the Italian Cooperation for Development is € 2,000,000.