Midwives to travel to Nepal to train health staff
Becky Millar says she and her colleagues are hoping to learn as much as they teach during the trip.
**Midwives to travel to Nepal to train health staff**
Becky Millar, a midwife at The Real Birth Company, will be travelling to Nepal with her colleagues.
A midwife heading to Nepal to train healthcare staff says she hopes to learn more about the country’s culture surrounding childbirth.
Millar will be among staff from the educational firm The Real Birth Company, based in Hereford, who are due to fly to the south Asian country on Wednesday.
She said the project’s goal was to help "empower" women during pregnancy so they feel able to make decisions that improve birthing outcomes.
"It's fascinating, birth traditions in different cultures and different countries," Millar told BBC Hereford and Worcester.
"While physiologically birth is exactly the same, the traditions and cultural aspects of birth are really, really interesting."
The company was invited to send a team after being contacted by the country’s midwives association.
They will be based in the capital Kathmandu, where they will deliver birth and anti-natal education, similar to training carried out by NHS staff.
"Birth is birth, no matter what country you're in," Millar added. "Women and families approaching birth have the same choices and decisions to make."
However, she said healthcare in Nepal was "a very different system" from the UK and was something she would be learning about.
"We've worked to adjust the programme to fit their culture and what actually happens in the country," she said.
"We're training midwives in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, where birth is quite medicalised and hospital-based.
"But of course, out in the rural communities, it's entirely different."
Millar said the aim was for the trained staff in Nepal to pass on what they have learned to their colleagues, to ensure the project was "sustainable".
The UK nurses were also hoping to learn as much as they teach during the three-week trip, she added.
"We're hoping to pick up as much knowledge as we're taking over."