The Business of Being Born Message Board

In 2004, Mozambique introduced a new health care initiative to train midwives in emergency obstetric care in an attempt to guarantee access to quality medical care during pregnancy and childbirth.The film, “Birth of a Surgeon,” follows Emilia Cumbane, one of the first midwives-in-training. She performs Cesareans and hysterectomies in makeshift operating rooms in rural Mozambique. We follow Cumbane from her home in the Mozambican capital Maputo, into intensive medical classes, through night shifts in the delivery wards, and watch as she fights for recognition of her surgical competence.
With more than half a million women dying in pregnancy or childbirth worldwide, Mozambique’s surgical training programs are being hailed as a model solution in confronting the maternal health crisis facing developing countries. The film captures one woman’s story on the frontlines of improving maternal mortality but it also demonstrates how low-cost, community-based health initiatives are changing the face of public health in Africa.
“I like to be a midwife,” Cumbane says. “I think it’s a good profession - to produce people.”
The first class of almost 30 surgical midwives trained in delivery techniques and advanced surgery graduate in July 2008.

Go to this link to watch some of the video: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/birth-of-a-surgeon/introduction/747/