Midwives

The Well-Family Midwife Clinics (WFMC) has transformed the personalities of the 200 midwives who have become entrepreneurs. Once dressed in dusters, riding by tricycle to a barrio in the dead of night to attend to a patient in labor pains, many of them were paid in kind, like half a dozen chicken, or by installment. They were just comadronas, as they put it.

At the first WFMC general assembly held in Cebu City three weeks ago, one was surprised to meet the "new" face of these midwives. They were smartly dressed, wearing real and trendy fancy jewelry, and moving about with the confidence of successful businesswomen. Back in their communities, they are the respected owners of midwifery clinics, dispensing family planning and maternal and child health services with such slogans as, "Malapit . . . Malinis . . . Affordable pa!" (Near your place, clean and sanitary, and affordable.)

Carina Stover, chief, Office of Population, Health and Nutrition, US AID, who attended the assembly (entitled Padayon, or moving boldly into the future), was very pleased with the successful midwife-entrepreneur program. She's happy that midwives have become entrepreneurs, running as they do clinics efficiently – for a fee – and becoming their own bosses and employing other midwives to assist them.

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Former Health Secretary Juan Flavier told the delegates that midwives are "one of the backbones of the nation's public health care delivery system. Thus, they play a major role in making accessible to our countrymen quality family planning and maternal and child health services. Through the establishment of a network of midwife-owned and managed clinics, they continue to extend their support to government's initiatives in helping realize our vision of health for all Filipinos."

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The clinics, conceptualized by the staff of the JSI Research and Training Institute, have received support from USAID, and the midwives themselves used their own resources to set up them up. But with the reality of international funding coming to an end, the Well-Family Midwife Clinic Partnership Foundation (WFMI) was launched to help the WFMC program stand on its own. The foundation's president is Dr. Warlito C. Vicente, FPCS, whose message at the assembly said that "the umbilical cord from JSI who has nurtured us for the past several years" is being cut, but the "nurturing part has been most rewarding because it has truly empowered not only the midwives in the network but the NGOs as well. It has created a paradigm shift for the NGOs, a shift from being donor-driven to being business-driven."

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Two of the 200 midwife clinics are found in Muslim cities – Marawi and Baloi (in Iligan). These were identified by Hope for Change, an NGO in Iligan City. Hope's executive director, Nimfa Bracamonte and a team were tasked to conduct research on the social acceptability and marketability of WFMCs in these and other Muslim areas.

Nimfa, by the way, is a sociology professor at the Mindanao State University-Institute of Technology. On December 10, contracts will be signed by midwives and the WFM Midwife Clinic partnership Foundation."

In charge of identifying sites in Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is the NGO Kadtuntaya Foundation, Inc., whose executive director is Guiamel M. Alim. Kadtuntaya means mutual understanding, which applies to programs intended to bring to an understanding Christians and Muslims. By next week, the foundation shall have identified the sites, and the next step will be the signing of agreements between the midwives in ARMM and the JSI Research and Training Institute.

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Guiamel told this columnist Kadtuntaya was formed in 1986 in Cotabato City, and is engaged in such programs as giving support to farmers by way of seeds and microfinancing, livelihood, health education, children, peace education, and women. Earlier, an organization of which Guiamel was an active initiator, led a Muslim-Christian Integrated Development Program focusing on cooperative-building and dialogue among Muslims and Christians and other indigenous people in Mindanao. It worked for the acquisition of indigenous people of Certificates of Ancestral Domain titles.

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Guimel is the right person to identify the NGOs in ARMM as he knows the cultural background of Muslim families. Muslims, he said, are for family planning. In fact, he said, "Family planning starting in courtship. People think of having the right children so they can form the right society. Even in making love, the rituals that couples undergo lead to having offspring. "

As to methods acceptable to Muslims, Guimel says all methods are acceptable, provided they are not irreversible, such as vasectomy and ligation. Abortion is a big no-no, as that is committing sin.

And to the question of whether there will be peace in Mindanao, Gaimel says, "Let's make peace possible. Let's make it a part of our culture. Let's talk the language of peace."

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My e-mail address: [email protected].