In Tanzania, as in many other poor nations, women run a high risk of mortality in pregnancy and childbirth from largely preventable or treatable causes. For the newborns that are fortunate enough to survive childbirth themselves, an unsure fate awaits them as they lack their mothers’ care and specifically their breast milk. In Tanzania, baby food and formula are in short supply and the infants who survive the deaths of their mothers often become an additional financial burden for their extended families.
However, a recent article in The New York Times describes the pioneering approach to orphan care taken by the Berega Orphanage in Tanzania. To address some of the problems normally associated with orphaned and vulnerable children, the Berega program provides both child care for orphaned infants and a primary education to the young, rural women recruited to serve as their caregivers. Orphanages are generally better equipped than the families of orphaned newborns to provide for the basic needs of infants, but, as The New York Times reports, “to thrive, babies need dedicated caregivers, and their extended families may live in distant villages.”[1] Often the extended families of orphans are unable to visit, and the children suffer difficulty reintegrating when they return to their villages. Thus, these young female caregivers – or bintis in Swahili – are often recruited from the infant’s extended family.
The infants and their binti caregivers live at the Berega Orphanage for two to three years where the caregivers are provided with basic childcare skills and other basic skill-set instruction that is often lacking in their home towns. At Berega, bintis are taught to read, sew, cook and they are imparted with some primary healthcare basics. This model of a small, temporary orphanage that provides for infants while educating the young women who care for them is described by Dr. Peter Ngatia, Director of capacity building for the African Medical and Research Foundation in Kenya, as “the way to go.”[2]
For more information, see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/world/africa/25orphan.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
[1] Denise Grady “Death in Birth: Fragile Tanzanian Orphans Get Help After Mothers Die” The New York Times (June 25, 2009) p. A1
[2] Ibid
