I understand the need of home birth in India, not everyone has access to medical care in India that includes a trained Ob/Gyn. The options for a large part of India (Majority of India is a rural rather than urban) is the traditional midwife.
So it makes sense to give her some help to reduce the mortality rate she faces. To give her some training to atleast ensure that childbirth without complications have a higher survival rate. It’s simple things like sterile packs to make a sterile environment and education. India’s perinatal mortality rate in 1999 was 34 per 1000 (infant mortality is from birth to a year and is an indicator of a lot of really basic healthcare and disease prevention schemes. Perinatal mortality rates are an indicator of presence of pre birth and post birth care. That period of 3 months (6 to 9 months and the first month of the baby’s life) is the “big risk period”.
For instance the modified infant mortality rate in India is 72 out of 1000 live births. However in the peri-natal period nearly 30 babies die. Basically it’s 30 in the last two months of pregnancy and first month of pregnancy and a further 42 after that. A lot of it is down to indian women eating badly due to poverty a lot of it is untrained midwives rather than obstetricians who just aren’t available (when you have a billion people…)
To India the easiest fix was to deal with midwives. In the western world that kind of behaviour is “bloody inexcusable”.
The obstetricians are our “midwives” because they are incredibly well trained and educated. They are no slouches when it comes to “normal deliveries” and definitely trained and qualified enough to deal with the many issues that can occur out of a normal pregnancy plus they are trained in emergencies which do occur and when they do occur are deadly to both.
So read away! It’s heartbreaking to read the stories on Dr. Amy’s site and it’s a rather forgotten piece of woo that we rarely hear about (I certainly didn’t know that there was a home birth movement until this morning).