Raising Healthy Babies in Egypt

By Laura Sheahen

The mother-in-law screamed, cried and stormed around the stage. "Why won't you listen to me?" she asked her son's wife.

But her daughter-in-law, holding a stage "baby," was adamant. She was going to breastfeed the baby, not use dry formula. She was also determined to try other things recommended by CRS health workers in her Egyptian village, like getting her children vaccinated.

It was just a 10-minute skit acted out in an auditorium, but it reflected a momentous shift in attitudes for thousands of rural Egyptian women served by Catholic Relief Services' programs. In many impoverished villages in an area called Fayoum, old customs (or in the case of baby formula, not-so-old customs) were hurting children. Mothers would put onion juice and salt in a baby's eyes to drive away devils. They'd give newborn babies only sugar water during the first few days after their birth. And they would use polluted water to wash clothes and even food.

Confronting Child Mortality

In a survey conducted in the Fayoum region before the CRS program began, 21 percent of the 10,000 women who responded said they had lost a child before the age of 5. Dehydration from diarrhea, along with untreated fevers, claimed the lives of many children.

"In one case, a baby needed an incubator," says Adel Kerollos, a technical specialist for CRS' Fayoum program. "The mother-in-law put the baby in a drawer, thinking it would help. But the baby died."

Determined to prevent such tragedies, CRS launched an integrated health and sanitation program for Fayoum villages in 2004. With financial backing from the Swiss Fund, CRS programs gathered small groups of women and taught them how to keep children healthy, eventually reaching more than 2,300 mothers. The programs distributed first-aid kits, gave lab tests to 12,600 people, and vaccinated thousands of children against diseases like measles, polio and mumps. Mobile health "caravans" went from village to village doing checkups for more than 12,000 people. The program also arranged for urine and blood analyses for pregnant women, 1,250 of whom were treated for anemia. Trainers taught women about washing babies, good nutrition and how to avoid parasites like tapeworm; 1,671 children were treated for such parasites.

Now, 90 percent of the children in the program have good weight levels and are growing normally. "We've raised the frequency of pregnant women's visits to clinics," says Salwa William, a doctor with CRS. To be self-sustaining, the program taught nurses and women in the community how to pass on their knowledge to others. CRS trains women in the community, not outsiders, so women are learning from neighbors they trust. That way, families get buy-in even from formerly skeptical relatives.

Celebrating a Healthier Community

In late November 2008, hundreds of women left their villages for a day and brought their kids to the town of Fayoum to celebrate the health program's completion. Before an audience of mothers and babies, teams of women competed in Jeopardy-style trivia competitions, answering questions about things like vitamins. In the packed auditorium, women performed skits they'd created about washing vegetables and buying salt with iodine. Village nurses discussed how the program had helped their patients. And a real-life young wife and her mother-in-law—who, unlike the fictional stage couple, were not at odds—talked happily about how they hosted health sessions in their home.

"In the last four years, we've really been able to change things," says Mohamed Sabry, CRS program manager for the Fayoum project. He points out that high-risk pregnancies are being identified and more mothers are aware of malnutrition issues.

"Women here used to think they needed money to have better health," says Kerollos. "Now they know that information alone is enough to improve your health in many ways."

After the celebration, women crowded around the stage to talk about their own experiences. "I used to wash my family's clothes in the dirty canal," says one beneficiary. "But now I use clean water. I also don't reuse dishwater two days in a row."

Another woman explains how the program overcame her family's reservations. "At first, my husband and mother-in-law were worried about my leaving the house to go to the health awareness sessions," she says. But they support her now, because "I learned how to take better care of my children."

Laura Sheahen is CRS' regional information officer for Europe and the Middle East. She is based in Cairo.