Guest Blog – Maternal Health – A Father’s Perspective – By Joey Shapiro

Last Year Joey Shapiro lead a group of Faiths Act Fellows to Ifakara in Tanzania. We spent a lot of time at the St Francis Hospital meeting patients and hearing their stories.

Joey has just recently become a father – he writes on Maternal health in the USA and in Africa and reflects on his faith as a Jew on being thankful to what we have. This blog can also be found on the MADE in Europe website

My son Simon came early. Over a month, in fact. Born on the 21st of August 2010, we had not finished preparing for his arrival, emotionally or logistically.

He came on a Friday night, quite unexpectedly. My wife woke me at 1.30am and knew something wasn’t right. In the back of our heads, we knew Simon was on his way, but a month early? It was frightening. Though I did not say it out loud, I knew a premature birth could be a recipe for disaster and needed to steady myself for whatever potential pitfalls lay ahead for all of us.

St Francis Hospital Ifakara

The birth was easy (as easy as a natural birth can be…easy is not the right word; ask any labouring mother and she will assure you that labour is beyond difficult). My amazing wife laboured for less than seven hours, and out he came, beautiful and bellowing to announce to the world his arrival.

But he was early and he was small and the doctors didn’t want to take any chances. So he was put in the intensive care unit, just to make certain he was fully developed. Precautionary, they told us, but still. I was frightened the first time we entered the intensive care unit to see him. I had expected a morbid place, with the chill of parents expecting the worst for their underdeveloped neonates hooked up to blinking and beeping machines, tubes everywhere.

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The Development Struggle

Photo Curtosey of Tim Brauhn www.timbrauhn.com

We know humanity has failed; has the humanitarian ‘industry’ also failed?

Today I attended Catholic Mass in Ifakara, south central Tanzania. The congregation was huge and the church was full with many at standing at the back of the hall for the entire 2 hour service. I noted how many young, enthusiastic and vibrant people attended the mass in contrast to the services I have attended at home in London. Young people made up a huge portion of the congregation; is this because of the level of community spirit that exists? The shear poverty that people are in that means church is the only hope? Or is it that most of the population don’t make it to be old enough to be considered old? Probably it is all three.

We attended mass today as a group of 10 from all different faiths – Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sikh and Theists; our message a simple yet complicated one. People of different faiths working together for positive social action. This could be anything from campaigning on climate change, promoting Fair Trade or doing something about the global fight on poverty. For us it is trying to achieve the Millennium Development Goals with special attention to the eradication of deaths caused due to Malaria.

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