Amidst the havoc caused by floods, there’s some truly heartwarming news coming from Assam. Our response team in the flood-hit areas of Assam pulled off a miracle by helping a pregnant woman  deliver a child safely in the absence of immediate medical care. Our team members Meghna, Mintu Debnath and a partner staffer Purna helped in the delivery of the child with telephonic support from Meghna’s doctor brother over the phone. Both the baby and the mother were mobilized to the hospital immediately after the delivery and they are doing well.

Bal Raksha Bharat’s team has been at the frontline in flood-torn Assam, providing life-saving aid to affected children and their families. On July 26, our team in the Uloni village of Dhemaji district pulled off a miracle when they helped a pregnant woman named Bilaisree deliver a child safely in the absence of immediate medical care. Our team wason its way back from distribution of relief material in Dhemaji when they came across a situation wherein an 8 months pregnant woman in the village had to be taken to the hospital as she had started having labour pain. Our team learnt that for reaching the hospital, the pregnant woman would have to walk for about 2.5 kilometres, crossing  4 bamboo bridges across flooded rivers.  Further, she needed to take a tempo to reach the Public Healthcare Centre which was 15 km away by road.

Our team swung into action immediately. We made a stretcher with bamboo sticks to take Bilaisree to the point where our vehicle was parked so that we could take her to the hospital. With barely 300 metres covered, she started groaning in pain. The head of the baby had started to come out.  We took her off the stretcher immediately. Village woman gathered around her but all of them were clueless about how to deliver a child. There was no midwife present in the village.

It was in such circumstances that Meghna took charge of things. She called up her brother in Delhi who is a doctor and started receiving instructions from him on delivering the child. Meanwhile, Purna and Mintu started arranging the things which were required during the childbirth. Following the instructions of her brother, Meghna miraculously helped Bilaisree deliver the child. She then cleaned the blood, measured the cord, tied it with two strings, cut it with a sterile blade and tied the cords back to avoid blood loss. Meghna wrapped the baby up in a clean ‘gamchha’.

To everyone’s joy, the baby was delivered safely, however, the mother was still in pain with contractions and her placenta was not yet out. She was put back on the stretcher and taken to the hospital immediately in our car that was waiting at the end of the road. Upon reaching the Public Health Centre almost 13-15km away, the nurse took care of everything: removed the placenta, cleaned the baby, got the baby fed and gave the mother oxygen and glucose. Both the baby and the mother are healthy now. The mother and the community decided to name the baby boy after Meghna’s brother –  Sushrit!