#OPLAStories - Juliette discovers her vocation as a midwife to deliver babies, and a new world
by Tainã Santana on behalf of the OPLA Team
We are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the EoC invests in young people to help rebuild the country. In the DRC, the maternal and infant mortality rate at birth is very high: approximately one out of one hundred and seventy mothers dies during childbirth1, and this happens due to the lack of qualified personnel and the lack of adequate means. This was a decisive factor in the life of Juliette, the young Congolese woman whose story we are telling you today.
Juliette recounts:
‘After secondary school I thought I would not be able to continue my studies and would never enter university because I had no one to support me. My aunt who had helped me through secondary school had died while giving birth. It was a very powerful experience for me that made me realise what my task was: to become a midwife one day to help women give birth and to save lives.’
Motivated by this strong experience, she requested support from the EoC to be able to realise her dream of studying midwifery - and received it. It has been three years now since Juliette embarked on her studies, and she has already helped deliver many babies in the hospitals where she has worked. She tells us:
‘Seeing a baby come into the world makes me passionate and neither they nor their mothers should die.’
The Congolese context is unfortunately strongly marked by corruption, which is present in so many areas of social life - from large organisations to everyday life. Even in her environment, Juliette says, it is a strongly present phenomenon, and is even considered as normal.
‘Unfortunately, here in the DRC, a woman who has to give birth, if she wants to be sure that someone will help her, knows that she will have to calculate with giving extra money to the midwife; and there are midwives with no conscience who even demand it.’
It is precisely in such circumstances, where hope for a better tomorrow seems to be lacking, that change must be promoted in order to bring about a different future. Investing in young people plays a special role in this: who better than them to have the courage to oppose the status quo? Juliette has always refused to receive extra money for practising her profession, and explains her choice as follows:
'We young people have to change this mentality. I talked about it with my colleagues and none of our group takes extra money'.
Very impressed by the action of that young group of girls the other midwives said:
‘You female students are poor and have so many difficulties, but you don't accept money... go on like this we need you to change our world'.
So from the hands of a young midwife comes the seed for a better future, a seed that is already beginning to bear fruit. Juliette concludes:
‘Thank you very much to the EoC, you also form us as women and men of integrity who are true to our values.
Like Juliette, other “new” women and men are being born and are giving birth every day to the future, above all where it is least expected! Would you also like to help in this “birth”?
Write to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and you too can become a ‘midwife of a new world’.
Credits foto: Foto di Kaboompics.com su Pexels
1 Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2020: estimates by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2023. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
