The Social Promotion Foundation, with the support of the City Council of Majadahonda, launched last March the project “Improving maternal and child health at the St. Gabriel health centre”, with the aim of curbing the high mortality rate in this sector of the population of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).
One of the consequences of poverty is the lack of access to rights, especially basic services such as health. The project contributes to reducing this gap through the provision of services for free. The actions are developed at San Gabriel Health Center (SGCHC), a non-profit institution that provides affordable, comprehensive and quality services to the population of the area. The beneficiaries are pregnant women and children under five. It is a poor and highly vulnerable population, with scarce resources to access other health services.
Genet Neri is 29 years old, married and mother of three children. Lives in the sub city of Akaki Kality, Woreda 05, in a peri urban villa called “Berta sefer”, in a rented house. The monthly income, about 1,500 ETB (60 €), comes from the work of her husband as a security guard in a factory. She is illiterate and has no job.
Her first two deliveries were attended by traditional midwives in her own home. The second one was especially complicated, and she still remembers the serious complications that resulted from it. Three years later, she became pregnant with her third child. As a result of her own experience, she decided to go to SGCHC thanks to the “Community Health Extension Workers (CHEWs), which work is to improve the link between health facilities and the community, being one of their activities the basic health information,
Today, Genet Neri, has vaccinated her baby 45 days old. “The health center is very clean and very nice. From the first day, I was glad to have come here. The nurses welcomed me very well, gave me a complete information about the pregnancy, they examined me, I was referred to the laboratory and I had an ultrasound. After obtaining the results of the laboratory, I was prescribed medications and explained the need to take them for the proper development of the baby,” she says. She is very satisfied with the professionalism and always positive support of all health center workers: “I have been coming without missing any of my appointments and I always follow their recommendations.” When she went into labor, she went to the center of San Gabriel and gave birth to a baby who weighed 3.4 kg. “I was looked after in a very clean and friendly room, and I was attended by midwives. I am very surprised to be able to access all these services for free.”
