Women's Health in Oaxaca

Philosophy
The life of women includes different stages: living childhood , we grow towards our fertile stage of live. We feel life growing in our wombs and we become mothers. Then we enter menopause and we become elderly. Each stage has its physical, emotional and spiritual changes: Its possibility to grow and mature as individual and as members of our community. If we support women during these stages, we strengthen her and her children; her families and the community she lives in.

Objectives
To contribute improving health conditions of the women of Ikoods, by offering midwifery training, promoting sexual and reproductive rights and communication skills in order to improve relationships with the medical staff of the local Centro the Salud and other community stockholders. Thereby we also strengthen the practice and the development of traditional medicine and the individual as well as the community autonomy.

Specific Objectives

• Develop a theoretical/practical training model for traditional midwives, based in continuous education and personal commitment.
• Strengthen the relationship between medical staff in the governmental health center and the traditional midwives and shamans by enhancing respectful and fluid communication between both ways of clinical assistance.
• Give workshops in midwifery practice and sexual and reproductive rights.
• Enhance critical thinking in order to evaluate the information and related it to the social context of the community.

Strategies
We will be visiting the group of midwives at the “Casa de la Salud de la Mujer Indigena” once a month for 2 days: we will give workshops and we will accompany the midwives in their professional routine. We will also enhance communication between the physicians at the Centro de Salud and organize meetings with the medical staff, community representatives, schools and other community groups, in order to build a network of social support in case of complications during pregnancy and birth. We will disseminate information about sexual and reproductive rights.