Female Genital Mutilation - A Catalyst for High Maternal Mortality Rates

According to WHO (2014), Female Genital Multilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. FGM also comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. In Kenya FGM is outlawed and Kenya has duly signed laws with the international community outlawing the same.
Recently women from Kajiado Constituency requested the government to have FGM made legal so as to allow for the culture to continue. This women constitute the Maasai community - one of the communities that still practice FGM. After the request was made, a debate went into parliament with most of the MPs denying the request all except one Jimmy Angwenyi MP of Kitutu Chache North. He wnet ahead to make his argument bu saying "Madam Speaker, we should not criminalize our cultures as Africans yet this House has not implemented any law to criminalize gayism borrowed from foreign countries. These gays are freely and openly demonstrating for their rights. FGM should not be criminalized because we in Kisii allow only for a small cut for our girls" (Kisika, 2014).
Kenya currently high maternal rates of 360 deaths per 100,000 have increased in the last one year rather than declining and are a source of concern. We are currently placed at position 30 of having the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. One of the long term risks of FGM is an increased risk of childbirth complications and newborn deaths. The country needs to focus more on practices that will bring about the well being of the woman who is the basic foundation of any community. FGM is one of the culprits that needs to curbed once and for all and remove such backward thoughts as harbored by Jimmy Angwenyi.

Sources:

Kisika, S., 2014. MP finds himself in trouble for supporting FGM. [Online]
Available at: http://m.news24.com/kenya/MyNews24/MP-finds-himself-in-trouble-for-supporting-FGM-20140619
[Accessed 20 June 2014].

World Health Organization, 2014. Fact Sheets N°241. [Online]
Available at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/
[Accessed 20 June 2014].

Why did Safar Banu Die?

Today I read a story about Safar Banu. A 43 year old woman who had given birth to 9 children previously without the help of a clinic or ever visiting a clinic. She was too busy and basically could not afford to visit the clinic. Safar wanted to use Contraceptives but her husband threatened to divorce her if she did. When she found out she was pregnant a 10th time, she cried. The husband had a great of faith in Gopal Daktar the local healer. The birth was very difficult as Safar had suffered an Anaemic condition with was unrecognised throughout her pregnancy. After many complications Safar Banu died 8 days later. The facts from this case?

• The husband became aware too late of the wife's critical state by refusing to listen to the midwife
• Safar worked really hard and ate only after her husband and sons had eaten
• She drank only water when there was no rice
• When she was ill she went to her mother-a poor woman herself- for help
• The husband only thought of his illness not his wife's

After reading this story my heart cried out for Safar and so many other women. All i could ask was why. Whose fault was it? Was it Safar's? the husbands? The Daktar's? The Government?
Too many questions to be asked and no answers.


Sourced: White, A. C., Merrick, T. W., Yazbeck, A. S. (2006). Reproductive Health: The Missing Millennium Development Goal. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Open Access to Journals

Today I was working on my proposal and found this awesome article via Google Scholar that might help me identify a particular Gap that I was looking for. Clicked on the article, read the article, sounded impressive, however I have to pay to get the full article. It is fine to charge since the journal has to maintain their database somehow, but tell me is it logical that I am to be charged $30 for probably a paragraph that I will quote in my own proposal? That is approximately KShs 2600. Currently universities require over 20 references for the proposal. Assuming I paid for half of these then I would spend about 26,000 Kshs just to write my proposal. A feat I am not willing to partake. Thankfully there are the good people out there who provide journals free. An example is Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ. Definitely the different universities do pay for access to some of the journals, however isn't it our work as Scholars to provide open access to information that we have worked on. Are we not trying to make a change somewhere in the world?

Point of thought...!

Maternal Health and ICT

Did you know that maternal mortality rates (MMR) are an issue of concern and that Kenya is not going to be achieving the millennium development goal five (MDG5). About 360 women in 2010 out of 100,000 women died due to pregnancy related complications in Kenya. This figure has risen and is currently headed to about 500 women dying each year due to pregnancy complications. I do understand that we are a developing country with our own challenges but how do we tackle this problem?
The government is indeed taking this problem seriously and recently a bill was passed for free maternity services throughout the country and indeed this is a step in the right direction. Dr Boniface Chitayi does agree and states that 'the promise of free maternity services and free health services at the health centre and dispensary level is a huge boost to the march towards universal health access.' (Chitayi, 2013)
Will women really take advantage of these services? Will the MMR rates go down? I guess we will find out.



References
Chitayi B., 2013. Kenya: Delivering Free Maternity Is an Uphill Task retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201304171448.html on 26th June 2013

Who wants to be a millionaire!!!

Been relying on my phone to work on publishing my blog. That way any free time I have, it's to try and write n publish on this blog. Once per week is my motto. You must have heard or at least watched who wants to be a millionaire.. Well last week I was going through interactive tools to help students with their revision and came across this game. Rather interesting. All the rules of the game apply, although instead of the insanely hard questions they ask, you replace them with your own subject all on PowerPoint. Pretty cool, huh??

Yap! Ended up being a pretty creative way to revise, n hopefully helped the students learn something. They just did an exam. Now let's wait and see how they fare.

PhD topic found

Finally decided on my PhD topic in Maternal Mortality Rates. A colleague passed on due to complications during child birth the past week. We had a talk among my female colleagues and we discovered so many women, have been loosing their lives during childbirth. I was so affected by the talk that at that point all I could think of was how sad it was for all the women's families, all the babies left without a mother. All so disheartening. 

Next morning I woke up and it dawned to me. What had been done to prevent Maternal Mortality Rates in Kenya using ICT? I embarked on a research and do far nothing as far as my research goes. I have more research to do but I finally know that I found the topic, or the topic found me.! So here begins my journey. It's very exciting and we will make it. Updates coming soon. 

New Class New Ideas

Today I had my first Strategic  Information Systems class. This is a class I have taught for the last many semesters. Normally after introductions we would go and dive straight into the course by defining strategy and having discussions in regards to strategy. I have been trying to ensure that I change my classes a bit. To be more a facilitator than I am a lecturer. Today I decided to have then do a little exercise that sometimes you might find in the corporate world. The students that I was teaching were third year students. I gave them the Think Outside The Box game to solve.

It took a couple minutes before I got any sort of response. No one had a clue, I therefore asked them to discuss with each other to find out if they could get any possible solution. After a couple of minutes, they were still getting nowhere. A clue was given that the lines did not need to stay inside the imaginary box that they had created round the 9 dots. We were finally getting somewhere. We finally came to a consensus that I should show them how it is solved. Before I did that though, I had to find out what strategy they had used and hence the start of a lesson. All in all I used an unconventional tool to teach and it worked. For anyone interested in the solutions find them below.