Located in the country’s southern coast, Jacmel suffered extensive causalities as well as was left littered with crumbled buildings and destruction after the January 12, 7.0 earth quake.

Mother Health International’s (MHI) founding members were part of a first responder team of seven medics, midwives and support staff who traveled to Jacmel, Haiti on January 28, 2010 via Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic to offer disaster relief to women and children. With the help from private donations, NGO’s, non profit organizations and government organizations, the team was able to provide emergency medical aid, water and food to the women and children who survived the earthquake.

Shortly after arriving in Jacmel, the founders of MHI recognized the greater need beyond disaster and emergency aid and began the process to build a holistic maternal birth clinic in the heart of one of the most under served areas in Haiti, St. Helen Parish.

On March 10, 2010 MHI officially opened our doors to pregnant women and started prenatal evaluations immediately. A few weeks after the opening of the birth clinic, the first baby boy was born into the hands of a volunteer midwife, peacefully and healthy. Today nearly 100 babies have been born at our birth center and thousands of prenatal visits have been preformed.

The MHI birth clinic is modeled after the Midwifery Model of Care. Our birth center is housed in a 44 ft dome structure (1500 sq. feet) on a piece of land with a small house in front of it that serves as our home for volunteers. Midwives and OBGYN’s come from around the world to donate their time to serve the mothers of Jacmel.

[View with PicLens]

Community Outreach Educational Programs in Haiti

With the blessings of the Haitian Minister of Education, we have developed core curriculum programs to train community educators on breastfeeding, natural childbirth, infant care, sexual abuse awareness, family planning and peaceful parenting. These women will receive a certification to facilitate community-based education workshops in neighborhoods surrounding Jacmel. MHI has also created woman’s health educational classes for the mothers who are receiving care from our clinic. In addition, we are developing a training program that will certify Haitian women as traditional midwives. These midwives will have the opportunity to work with Mother Health International and be paid for their midwifery services.

Birth Statistics in Haiti and the Need for the Mother Health International Midwifery Model of Care

• Roughly 670 of 100,000 mothers die in childbirth in Haiti
• 150 of 100,000 die in childbirth in Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighbor
• 13 of 100,000 die in childbirth in the United States
• Haiti is ranked 36 world wide in infant deaths with 48.8 children dying per 1,000 births. 71.5 die before they reach the age of 5 per 1,000

[View with PicLens]

Amnesty International recommends birth centers as part of the solution to the crisis in maternity care. Childbirth is the second leading cause of death for women in Haiti. Routine and unnecessary birth interventions continue to be preformed on Haitian women in local hospitals leading to high cesarean section rates, and sometimes resulting in death of mother and/or child.

Mother Health International will continue to address the infant and maternal mortality rates in Haiti by using the MHI Midwifery Model of Care and offer prenatal care, nutritional support, labor and birth support, and postpartum care to all women who come to our clinic. In addition, we will be working with other NGO’s and major US corporations who are donating prenatal vitamins to support a healthy pregnancy.

Volunteer midwives and OBGYN’s come from around the world to work in our birth center. Our birth attendants are skilled at gentle birthing techniques intended to offer women a place of dignity in which to give birth, reduce pain, decrease interventions and cesarean sections. Our model of care incorporates traditional holistic midwifery care while respecting Haitian culture and customs.