Pakistani dais to be trained by N.Z. scheme

Press, 4 November 1986, Page 7

Pakistani dais to be trained by N.Z. scheme

Three hundred midwives will be trained in Pakistan under a scheme funded by the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand Save the Children Fund. Refresher courses will also be given to $630 dais, or traditional midwives. The Government and fund will each give $50,000 towards the scheme which is directed by the fund’s field director in Pakistan and administered by the Family Planning Association of Pakistan. The scheme would help improve health care for mothers and infants in Pakistan said the fund’s president, Mrs Betty Pearson, of Christchurch. Dais have status in their village communities and could pass on basic knowledge of hygiene, prenatal and postnatal care to the mothers, she said. The training of dafe was a well-established fund

programme in Pakistan. Eventually all dais in Pakistan would have been through the initial training course and the Family Planning Association would take over the retraining programme. Because of the low wages in Pakistan, aid money went a long way, she said. The programme would improve the chance of survival of every infant born under the supervision of a dai. Paradoxically, reduced infant mortality was the first step towards reducing the population in underdeveloped countries, said Mrs Pearson. When parents realised that a large family was not necessary to ensure the survival of several children to support them in old age, they did not have so many children. That experience has been documented in case studies in several <£sian countries. v