I'm attending the Sensitive Midwifery Symposium and today was just a day for me to sit and listen. It was interesting to hear people speak of the challenges they face in this health care system:
- Massive understaffing in the public hospitals and overall shortages of midwives
- Midwives are undertrained when they graduate (they have to train as nurses and get a midwifery focus within their midwifery degree, which often leaves them inadequately prepared to actually be a midwife)
- C-section rates as high as 90% in some private hospitals
- Overcrowding in public hospitals--one large maternity hospital here was built 80 years ago to serve 100,000 people. It has never been updated and it now serves 2 million people. It doesn't have hot water. This is the 2nd busiest maternity hospital in the country with 1,200 births per month! Women are spending days sleeping on the floor, or on a hard plastic chair, due to lack of beds.
I'm super tired and it's only 8 pm! I'm forcing myself to stay awake a bit longer.
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