Nalotu Esha Lemasagarai smiles broadly as she cuddles her baby girl aged one year and four months.
Although the baby girl is Nalotu’s fourth child, the 32-year-old mother has a special connection with the daughter of whom she talks fondly as though the toddler can even understand her mother’s special attachment.
On the critical date of the child’s birth on July 16, 2015, Ms Nalotu had woken up well preparing to attend a routine ante-natal clinic and health talk at the Beyond Zero outreach mission in her Sirata village in Samburu Central Sub-County when labour pains suddenly hit the unsuspecting mother.
A little concerned with the sudden change of events, Ms Nalotu had to quickly bypass other mothers on the queue awaiting services when the Beyond Zero Staff realized she was on the throes of giving birth.
The Beyond Zero medical staff quickly but temporarily abandoned the other clients to ensure they saved Ms Nalotu and her baby who apparently knew she was entering the world in the right environment but at the wrong time and place.
Nalotu successfully delivered her bouncing fourth child under the skilled hands of the Beyond Zero medical staff before she was linked to the “nearby” Sere Olipi health centre for her postnatal clinics.
Nine months earlier, the Beyond Zero medical staff had found themselves celebrating another successful feat when they made their first skilled delivery inside the same Beyond Zero mobile clinic on October 21, 2014, only two months after First Lady Margaret Kenyatta launched the clinic in Samburu County on August 21 of the same year.
On this date, labour pains again hit 27-year-old Ms Beatrice Leseketeti at Kirimon village during the first Beyond Zero outreach mission in Samburu Central Sub-County.
Ms Leseketeti delivered another bouncing baby girl under the watchful and skilled hands of the Beyond Zero medical staff.
The two mothers gave birth through a process referred by experts as the Simultaneous Vatex Delivery (or normal delivery).
The two healthy babies now represent the many skilled deliveries that have taken place inside some of the 47 mobile clinics spread across the county.
These deliveries are testimony over the need for mothers to seek skilled services to save themselves and their babies during the critical time of birthing.
But even as the Beyond Zero teams are celebrating the successful births of babies under their watchful eye and skilled hands across the country, one young husband in Samburu Central Sub-County is still mourning the sudden, untimely and unnecessary death of his wife who bled to death during child-birth under the unskilled hands of her mother in law.
Mrs Noltualan died on July 27 this year as her mother-in-law insisted that she had no need seeking the services of a health centre because she had successfully delivered her previous three children at home in Lekamoru village of Samburu.
On this date at 2.00am, the deceased delivered two children-a boy and a girl after prolonged labour, after which she started bleeding profusely.
At the wee hours of the night, faced with a medical crisis, the Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) could not handle, the family started calling for an ambulance as the mother writhed in pain.
Although the remote village was inaccessible by the Beyond Zero mobile clinic, its staff were able to finally make it to the home of the deceased at 3.30 am using a small ambulance.
It was however too late to save the mother who had already passed on through over-bleeding as her mother-in-law watched helplessly.
The medical emergency team, however, rescued her twins whom they immediately rushed and admitted to the Maralal referral hospital where they remained under medical watch for two weeks before they were finally released to the mourning father by the Sisters of Charity Homes who had assumed the role of foster mothers.
The five children are now under the care of their young father but the incident underscores the risks associated with giving birth in the hands of unskilled TBAs.
According to the Samburu County Director of Health Dr Martin Thuranira, unskilled births in the county are still high at 62-64 per cent in some regions.
“Every woman in Samburu is a TBA. Any woman can help deliver a mother in labour,” said Dr Thuranira and attributed the high numbers of unskilled deliveries to the nomadic lifestyle and lack of health awareness among the communities in Samburu.
The three births are recorded as part of Samburu County’s Beyond Zero mobile clinic’s heavy workload of 5,631 cases during a total of 165 outreaches made by the three mobile clinics in the county including two trucks acquired by the county at a cost of Sh26 million to supplement the one delivered by the First Lady.
The three mobile clinics cover some of the most difficult, hilly and circuitous terrains, sometimes covering long distances from the Maralal Referral hospital where the Beyond Zero clinic is normally based.
Some of the furthest outreaches by the clinic have been conducted at Ndonyo Wasin, in Samburu East Sub-County covering 367 kms and at Nguronit village in Baragoi of Samburu North Sub-County, a distance of 300 kilometres from Maralal.
Samburu County covers over 21,000 square kilometres.
By PSCU.