Maternal Shelter Rises in Namibia with Icelandic Funds

Work has started, mostly because of Icelandic funds, on building a maternal shelter in the town of Engela in northern Namibia. Pregnant women in this area have for years taken shelter during the last weeks of the pregnancy under trees by the roadside close to the county hospital.

At a special ceremony, ICEIDA recently gave Usko Nghaamwa, the county commissioner, a check for 2,5 million Icelandic kronur (ISK) to be put into the construction fund for the new maternal shelter. At the same occation, 300 thousand Icelandic kronur (ISK) were handed over that the residents of Reykjanesbær had collected for the construction.

Sighvatur Björgvinsson, ICEIDA’s Director General, and Vilhjálmur Wiium, ICEIDA’s Country Director, gave the checks to the county commissioner and received a lot of applause from the townspeople and expecting mothers who flocked to the ceremony which was held close to the place where the maternal shelter will rise. Aside from the county commissioner, representatives from the hospital were present along with the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs. Young girls from Engela also danced Namibian dances at the ceremony.

Many have been shocked by the women’s conditions by the highway and sent petitions for improvements. Therefore, Usko Nghaamwa, the county commissioner, established a fund raising committee last year and got the country’s first lady to stand as the campaign’s protector and manage the fund raising.

Vilhjálmur Wiium was startled when he studied the conditions last summer. “There are no beds for the women at the hospital and the maternity ward cannot accommodate expecting mothers until they go into labour,” he says. “That’s why the women sit down on the other side of the highway and wait. Many wait for days or weeks. There is no sanitary facility there, except for a corrigated iron partition which provides a little privacy for washing. They hang their undergarments on a cactus in the vicinity. Water is quite a distance away and going to the bathroom means walking for several hundred meters and going behind a bush. The women sleep on cardboard boxes and have some blankets.”

The new maternal shelter will be operational at the start of 2008.