On my first visit to Navrongo in July I worked with the health workers in one of the CHPS zones to invite a few women to keep “pregnancy diaries”. Below and attached is a summary of the issues raised.
We asked the women to record any issues on their minds related to their current or former pregnancies and their babies. Unfortunately we had not yet received Aliya and her shipment of voice recorders J so we could only ask literate people to take part, so the results are by no means representative. However, they are quite fascinating! Info like this will be very valuable for tailoring PP app content. My general takeaways:
- It’s great to see questions that we can deal with not only about health issues but also the practice of care-seeking in general (eg the question about child records).
- The questions reveal the real influence of local myths (eg confusion about value of fruits, night bathing and sleeping on your back) and traditions (eg eating sand).
- I think it’s quite interesting how committed the women were to keeping their diaries, with so little encouragement over time and no incentives given except for answers to their questions (we committed to answering every question they asked) - an encouraging sign that there is a thirst for information out there.
As an exercise it was all a bit ad hoc but I’m so happy that we’ve been able to hear directly from our customers in this way! I hope the below give us some good early insights, and I look forward to building upon this in a more systematic way as we get Navrongo ramped up over the coming weeks.
Jess
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Problems Encountered During Pregnancy
- Feeling Dizzy
- Sleepless night
- Swollen legs
- Feeling pains on the ribs
- Vomiting after eating
- Severe headache
- Body pains
- Some feel lazy
- Discharges in the vagina
- Abdominal pains
- Pregnant while bleeding
- Women do encounter several problems during pregnancy – for instance, headaches, vomiting, swollen legs, menstruation and others. Why?
- During my time of pregnancy I always had pain under one of my breast why?
- Why is it that you have headache when you are pregnant?
- Why swollen legs when pregnant?
Questions about Pregnancy
- I want to know why one may give birth to only boys or sometimes girls.
- Why do you say that fruits are good meanwhile our local people are against that?
- Why is it that the baby struggles in the womb and does not spoil the womb?
Advices during pregnancy given to us by people in our homes. Are these right?
- Some foods like flour, pork, mudfish, leftover T.Z. are not to be taken.
- We should have sex with our husbands in the seventh months.
- We should not sleep on our back.
- We should not sleep outside when the weather is cold.
- We are not to be eating fruits.
- We should not bath in the night.
Babies
- In association with the children, when they are about to develop fresh teeth, they begin to fall sick, experience stomach aches, some unconsciousness, dysentery, followed by malaria. Why?
- The diseases that usually affect us here are malaria and diarrhoea.
- Why should they say children should not eat fruits, for they will be attacked by fever but in your [health workers] instruction, you say children should take fruits, why should you say that?.
- Why is it that when you get malaria sores are always found around you mouth?
- They say children should be taking eggs, what is the purpose of that?
- The child health records that we have, please can you tell us the purpose of it?
- What kind of disease is called kwashiorkor?
- Feverish condition
- Vomiting
- Running diarrhoea
- Body weakness
- Crying
- Things I think are good for my child: Fruits are good, Exclusive Breast feeding, Fruit juice, groundnut, millet and Beans are good for the child. Because of all this we and our children are suffering too much because if you are pregnant some people say that don’t eat fruits like mango and others.
Foods that I mostly eat when I am pregnant.
- Eating a lot of White sand
- Eating of plenty salt
- Eating a lot of T.Z and vegetables and groundnut soup
- Eating a lot of baobab fruits
- Shea nuts, oranges, water melon, banana and sugar cane
- Eating a lot of okro stew and Banku
Reasons for pregnant women not allowed to sit one way or lie on their back
- The baby may die in the womb
- It may also be difficult for you to give birth
- It may also cause sickness to the pregnant woman too.
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