Weaning away women from dependence on ‘hilot’

MINALABAC, Camarines Sur—Fatigue doesn’t show in midwife Anita de la Cruz, 51, who has been up since 2 a.m. caring for two pregnant women at a birthing facility in Barangay Hobo in Minalabac, Camarines Sur, about 300 km south of Manila.

She delivered two babies one after the other, in a task crucial to the municipal government’s campaign to convince pregnant women to stop giving birth at home and seek professional care.

Project Mama (Maternal Assistance Monitoring Activity) is the brainchild of Mayor Gil Basmayor which was launched last year. This year, it’s been delivering results.

Mothers get free medical services and medicines to prevent bleeding, ward off infection and kill pain before they are discharged from the facility. Babies get free injections of vitamins and complete immunization vaccines.

De la Cruz said, however, that some women still prefer to tap the services of a hilot. She recalled one instance when a woman and her baby were put on the brink of death before the hilot realized they needed to be brought to a hospital.

Basmayor said among the obstacles that his administration had to deal with in launching Project Mama was “cultural orientation,” a belief that a hilot was more effective than professional health workers.

He cited records last year that showed 43 percent of live births in his town were assisted by a hilot.

Under Project Mama, the hilot doesn’t lose a role. They were tapped to assist midwives in the town’s birthing facilities, which have started to operate in the villages of Salingogon, Hobo, Poblacion, Malitbog and Sagrada.

Minalabac is a third-class municipality with a population of 44,000 dependent mostly on fishing and farming for livelihood.

Project Mama’s objective, said the mayor, is zero mortality rate for women and babies. It seeks to achieve that by weaning away pregnant women from a hilot.

Teams of medical workers and volunteers conduct house-to-house surveys for a “pregnancy data board,” according to Dr. Renabeth Vera, municipal health officer.

The project won’t be lacking in beneficiaries. This year alone, according to the mayor, 526 women have given birth while 428 more are expected to give birth until December.