Chris McIvor's Blog
Life in Mozambique
In any given week in any rural village in Mozambique it is highly likely that one will come across the funeral of a recently deceased member of the community. While funerals take place all over the world and all of the time what makes Mozambique different from say a country like Scotland is both the frequency of such an occurrence and the disproportionate number of infants and children who are included.
The figures are alarming. Nearly 99 per cent of child deaths occur in developing countries. Of the 9 million children who die before the age of five each year, more than fifty per cent are located in sub Saharan Africa, While 168 children out of every 1,000 born in Mozambique will never reach their fifth birthday, compare this to 6 for the UK and 8 for the US. In general the infant mortality rate for developing countries stands at an average of 150 children per one thousand. For industrialized countries like our own the average stands at 6.
Faced with such regular occurrences communities often reconcile themselves to the fact of child mortality by labeling its occurrence as somehow natural or inevitable. The death of a new born baby or young infant becomes one of nature’s regular events, part of the order of things that one can never change. But if infant mortality is as low as 6 children per 1000 in industrialized countries there is no natural reason why this should not be the case for every other country on the planet. The factors that cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of infants every year are reversible and avoidable if the political will was there to do something about it.
Last week the organization I work for, Save the Children launched a campaign called EVERYONE. It’s about mobilizing concern, resources and commitment to reducing child mortality, this unacceptable number of children who die each year from preventable causes. Often when I read campaigns material from my own and other organizations it seems remote and distant. The problems they are addressing have to do with other people who live in poorer countries, communities or suburbs than my own. Although I live in Mozambique, a country which has one of the highest infant mortality figures on the continent, the suburb of the capital I live in could be in Lisbon or London. Extreme poverty is there but not on my doorstep.
Sometimes, however, personal experience connects you with an issue and brings home to you more graphically the reality of what poor people have to face in their daily struggle for survival. A few months ago my partner had a complication in her pregnancy, which required prompt treatment and some immediate medication. In many other countries this complication would have been labeled as minor but here in Mozambique it turned into a saga. Quite simply the medication we needed was not available.
As I frantically drove around all the pharmacies in Maputo looking for a drug that would have been routinely stored in any pharmacy in the UK, I realized how precarious the life of a child actually is in this country Any slight complication before, during of after their birth can become fatal because treatment is too slow or because a basic drug is either unavailable or too expensive for a family to afford.
In one of the hospitals I passed through in Maputo, where I enquired after the drug I was looking for, I passed a line of pregnant women about to give birth. An overworked doctor and several stressed nurses were trying their best to keep up but if any of these mothers required urgent treatment they would probably have not received it in time. From what I have seen it’s even worse in rural areas where the nearest clinic can be hours or even days away from a village, and where the supply of drugs and the presence of trained nurses are even more limited.
In the end I managed to find the drug we were looking for. Because the person who sold it to us knew I was desperate the price became inflated. Most families would probably have not been able to afford it. Darren is now a plump and healthy baby but sometimes when I look at him I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t had the transport, money and privileged status to ensure that his mother received the appropriate care that allowed him to survive.
Part of me feels guilty too. ‘You’re lucky,’ said one Mozambican friend. ‘Another family would have lost their child because they have none of your advantages.’ But guilt of course is weaker than the instinct to protect your family and I remind myself that health care, education, clean water, adequate shelter etc are not a luxury or a privilege but rights that should be delivered to everyone. Perhaps anger and indignation are more appropriate emotions when faced with these appalling statistics, not guilt at being better off, indifference because these problems are remote, or resignation and acceptance because they happen so frequently.