Can literacy instruction contribute to the training of traditional birth attendants?
J W Ryan, J G Kim · PubMed · 1986
Cooperation between the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) has been focuses on among other things programs to train traditional birth attendants (TBAs) who play a dominant role in developing countries in safe maternal-child health (MCH) care. Such programs now exist in 52 countries; they have been successful for the most part despite barriers to training presented by factors such as generalized illiteracy among TBAs and the problems presented by developing appropriate educational media. is a relative term and functional literacy for a TBA could imply the ability to use charts or read a professional newsletter. Often TBAs are mature women for whom midwifery is a part-time profession: these factors affect their trainability as well as the amount of time devoted to the training and the intervals between training sessions. Combined literacy and MCH training should follow guidelines which include making literacy itself a prime objective instead of a 2ndary component and integrating health into literacy training where appropriate. Literacy is considered a perishable skill which must be employed regularly after training to maintain itself. A problem faced by these efforts is that of languages and dialects which tend to vary considerably in some developing countries. A chronology of program implementation is suggested consisting of development of materials and methodology testing of the program in pilot areas and assessment of relative costs and effectiveness of health training with or without a literacy program. Training might usefully be broken down into modules on specific subjects to make the program adaptable to specific situations.