Rabaraba Health Centre

We made contact with Officer in Charge Sylvester of Rabaraba health centre, the health centre had run out of essential drugs such as metronidazole, family planning implant trocars, alcohol swabs and plasters to name a few and no newborn baby weighing scale.

We flew in THORs aircraft landed in a savanna grassy airstrip. Grass was about knee height.  The aircraft was loaded  with 40 mother supervised delivery incentive gifts, 2 cartons of assorted dressing, plaster, swabs, metronidazole IV and tablets.

We were not able to source a baby weighing scale as there are none available locally. In the meantime, the weights of newborn are estimated. This is an urgent need.

Young school children and few adults drawn by the sound of the aircraft – Rabaraba HC services a large area incorporating the inland mountains regions, coastal villages along its 30 KMs coastline.   Mothers come from as far as Agaun to have their babies at Rabaraba HC.  Agaun is 2 days walk and a 6 hour paddling a canoe.

The number of mothers who die in childbirth in this region is not known as many deaths go unrecorded.

So our mission is to increase the supervised delivery rate and facilitate family planning.

We are also committed to continuing our maternal death investigations at the village level.   By doing this we gain a better understanding of the issues involved and design programs that can better equip the community to prevent them.

Dr Barry