EMERGENCY in Afghanistan

Breech Without Borders is collaborating with EMERGENCY, a nonprofit NGO based in Italy with global healthcare projects to improve maternal and infant health in Afghanistan. BWB is providing vaginal breech training and educational materials, free of charge, to the midwives and physicians at the Anabah Maternity Centre, a busy hospital supporting over 600 births per month or 7,200 births per year.

Read the latest blog post by EMERGENCY about how our collaboration is going! 

In June 2003, EMERGENCY opened a Maternity Centre in Anabah, Afghanistan, to provide antenatal, gynaecological, obstetric, and neonatal care to the population of the Panjshir Valley and surrounding provinces. In 2015, the Maternity Centre underwent an expansion, with a new state-of-the-art wing improving its facilities and increasing the number of beds available.

BWB is providing online breech training and other materials to all maternity staff members, free of charge. In exchange, the Anabah Maternity Centre is providing BWB data on clinical outcomes of all breech births attended at their hospital, normally 200-300 breech births per year, for a 5-year period. This will help BWB and Anabah Maternity Centre understand the impacts of physiological breech birth training in a setting where almost all breech babies are born vaginally and cesarean section is reserved for true emergencies. 

Long Night is a new documentary by Emmy Award-winning journalist Lynzy Billing that shares a rare look at healthcare in Afghanistan, told through the eyes of the dedicated medical professionals who have worked tirelessly throughout decades of war and its aftermath. 

Long Night reveals how quality healthcare continues to operate in a society often overlooked by the media—and where hospitals are busier now than ever, treating victims of explosive remnants of war, many of them children. 

The last 10 minutes of the film focus on EMERGENCY's work training Afghan women, with a large focus on the Anabah Maternity Centre. One of the midwives, Maria, shares her experience — she has been at Anabah since the facility first opened in 2003..

The film will receive its North American premiere in New York on April 28, 2025, with additional screenings in D.C. (April 30th) and Los Angeles (May 4th).

Would you like to support this initiative? Please consider donating to our Globalize Breech Birth fundraiser or directly at bit.ly/givetoBWB. 

For more information about EMERGENCY:
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