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Hear Our Voices - Angola Dina will have a safe delivery
Hello. My name is Dina and I am 19. I am nine months pregnant. Thanks to Movimondo, I do not have to travel very far to the clinic. I live just down the road, which allows me to have regular consultation with the nurses. Angola’s health care system was severely damaged in the long civil war, which ended just over a year and a half ago. Hospitals and health posts, where they exist, are in dire need of rehabilitation. Upgrading of health services in return areas is a priority strategy for the UN’s 2004 Transitional Appeal for Angola. The health tent in Dina’s village, Villa Franca, is one of seven locations in Londuimbali Municipality set up and run by the Italian NGO Movimondo with support from OCHA’s Emergency Response Fund. After UN security assessments deemed the area safe and accessible to humanitarian partners in March 2002, OCHA supported Movimondo in establishing health posts in seven locations and rehabilitating the hospital in the municipal capital. Maternal and child health care are priorities in this country where both maternal and infant mortality rates are grim. Maternal mortality in Angola was 1,300 per 100,000 births in 2003, an improvement over 1,835 in the previous year, but still one of the highest rates in the world. One out of four children does not reach the age of five. Like all the women who take part in the maternal health care project, Dina has been equipped with a maternal health care kit containing everything necessary for a clean and safe delivery at home. The kits are assembled and distributed to NGOs by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Angola is a country no longer on the verge of disaster, but on the verge of recovery. For that reason, projects such as this one funded by 2004 Transitional Appeal – the last appeal for Angola – adapt and expand programmes established during emergency phase for “crisis response” to shift to “community response” during the transition phase. Photo: OCHA |
