Safe hands for mothers.

• Tenlastelegging: ICM and worldwide news - Brief Article

A new charitable organisation was launched on December 4, 2003, with the aim of assisting health professionals in their fight to prevent deaths and suffering in pregnancy and childbirth. The Executive Director is Nancy Durrell McKenna, who presented her striking photographic and film work at the ICM Triennial Congress in Vienna, and has also worked with the Royal College of Midwives, UK on projects to help publicise the work of midwives. Safehands has the aim of adding a further dimension to the training of skilled care attendants by producing and distributing effective and culturally appropriate visual education packages. At the launch, those attending were shown the first Safehands project, a short video produced in partnership with FIGO. Entitled 'Fistula Pilgrims', it vividly portrays the fate of women who suffer obstetric fistula after a prolonged obstructed labour. (See IM 2001; 5:4-5, for ICM/FIGO...