The city of Tijuana, Mexico is wrestling with a crisis of unserved and underserved immigrant, refugee, and displaced populations. Many pregnant mothers, many of them Haitian in origin, are in need of perinatal services that are simply not available.
At the request of the Office of Human Rights and the Asociación Mexicana de Partería, One World Midwives is serving these families by providing emergency maternity care supplied by team members, partners, and volunteers.
In 2016, members of over 300 indigenous tribes and nations gathered in North Dakota with their allies to make their voices heard as water protectors protesting the construction of an oil pipeline through the sacred land of the Lakota. The several camps that sprung up contained a fluctuating population of sometimes over 10,000 people, including many women in need of care.
While serving, we created prenatal documentation to travel with each patient while living in transient circumstances. We also developed a system of recording the interaction with each mother served in concert with indigenous midwives, while providing confidential care and meeting individual needs of varying ages and gender identities.
Bumi Wadah Maternity and Health Clinic was formed in response to the tremendous need for maternal care in the wake of Super Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan in 2013.
Midwives and supplies were dispatched to the typhoon Yolanda disaster area in Dulag, Leyte, Philippines to help staff the emergency birth center set up by organization Bumi Wadah. There, we sent two midwives to help deliver culturally relevant and excellent care with little resources available. Working in concert with the local midwives, we cared for the women and families of the most hardest hit population of the typhoon while the area's infrastructure was being rebuilt.