The Project べびー福 / Baby-fuku : Donation of used baby's clothing.

We collect used baby's and kid's clothing in sizes from 0 till 3 years old, then provide direct delivery to mothers who live in devastated areas and developing countries.

Also we are truly appreciating small donations what covers a delivery cost and a new baby goods purchase.

 

A used baby clothing: some people will say: “It is just a trash”, some people think: “It is smart way to reuse it”, but for some of people it could very supportive.

Our babies have a magic feature: they grow up as yeast dough. Just couple months ago your baby was born and now you need to have a shopping, perhaps third times already.
How about those stuffs what have been used less than five times only?
Should its be sent to trash box?
We do not think so and there are several reasons, why:

First of all, if they still look like as new and in good quality it better to be reuse. Japanese language has very meaningful word: “mottainai”, what laterally “sad for waste of something”. In reality, to throw almost not used clothing out IS mottainai. We suggest: do not do like this.

Then, a family budget could be rescue by getting used baby clothing approach. To get a dozen new T-shirts and panties each month is really could crush a financial stability even a wealthy people.

The most important to understand, then at any time and any part of our world can happen difficulties, troubles or even a disaster, That can heard each individual and turn persons to change their life style and needs. Furthermore, for some of people daily surviving is their life style for many years. Many of these people are mothers. Each day in the motherhood they have to manage ways and sources to obtain food and clothes for their baby. To have some shirts, panties, hats and shoes as a gift could be supportive a lot.

To donate used clothing is absolutely not a bad manner, it is smart way to conserve resources and support people in their needs.

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『べびー福』は、０歳から３歳までの子供服を集め、発展途上国や災害地の子供たちへ届けるプロジェクトです。

人によっては「そんなの、ゴミ同然。そんなものを人にあげるなんて。」と思うかもしれません。
でも中には「子供服を使い回すのは、賢い活用法！！」と思う方もいるでしょう。

０歳から３歳までの子供たちは私たちが予測もつかない様なスピートで成長します。
特に最初の１ヶ月では、出生時の体重の1.5倍も大きくなるのです！！
お祝いでもらったおしゃれ着が、５回も袖を通さないうちに小さくなってしまった。。。なんてことも。
また、外出機会の少ない月齢では、洋服の痛みも少なく、靴などは新品同然の物もあるでしょう。

これらを着られなくなったからと言ってゴミ箱に捨ててしまうのはもったいない！！

子供の成長に合わせてサイズのあった洋服を着せることは、子供たちが自由に活発に動き回ることができます。
運動能力や精神的に発達していくためにも、とても大切な事です。
また、お母さんやお父さんも、子供に可愛い洋服を着せる楽しみは育児の疲れを癒す助けになるでしょう。

お金のかかる妊娠、出産、育児です。
しかし、必要不可欠な子供服にかかる費用を削減出来れば、食事や教育などに予算をあてられるでしょう。

古着を活用することは決してマナー違反ではありません。
『服』を賢く活用して、子供、お母さん、お父さんに『福』が届くことを願っています。

http://www.ninpumama.jp
http://www.tokyo-hcc.com

 

Midwifery Practice in Nepal

At present, midwifery is neither an independent profession in Nepal, nor exist a separate cadre of midwives. Maternal and child health workers (MCHW) with three-month basic training in the clinical settings after class 8 passed mainly focusing on maternal and child health, and Auxiliary Nurse-Midwives (ANM) with 18-months of programme after grade 10th are the only midwifery care provider in the community. These workforces have limited educational background, limited midwifery training and lack of logistics support from the health system.

There is no legislation and no recognition of midwives. However, the Government of Nepal has recognized the need of producing professional midwives in the country in improving Maternal and Newborn health. It is mentioned in the National Skilled Birth Attendants Policy Long term (Pre-service) Measures (GON 2006).

(MIDSON) 

Women’s Health Status and Services in Nepal

From 1996–2006, Maoist rebels fought a civil war against the Nepal government, a democracy with a House of Representatives. As a result, the overall health situation of the country is poorer than it should be. For instance, availability of essential health care services is 78.8% and life expectancy is 60 years. As in other developing countries, diseases of pregnant women and children, infections and malnutrition account for two-thirds of Nepal's illnesses.

Women in Nepal face discrimination and marginalisation in the family, society and state. This is because of the low status of women in the society. As a result, in a country where the health system is already poor, the level of women's health and education is particularly low. To compound the problem, many districts of Nepal are remote, making access to health services and information very limited.

Reproductive and maternal health is of particular concern among Nepali women. In Nepal, the key role of a woman is to bear children, particularly sons. In fact, early and excessive childbearing weakens women, many of whom die or are chronically disabled from complications of pregnancy. It is not uncommon for Nepali women to experience a prolapsed uterus following birth. This is often due to recommencing, too soon, the expected workload, which is demanding and strenuous. Often, the prolapse remains untreated and women continue their remaining reproductive life miserable due to pain and suffering.

Pregnancy is taken as a natural process and God's gift, for which any medical care is regarded as unnecessary. As a result, a majority of Nepalese women have been suffering from the aforementioned problems and complications related to childbirth. Because their overall health is poor, they have very little opportunity for exercising their reproductive and human rights. The majority of Nepalese women have no pregnancy-related contact with modern health services and maternity services in Nepal are very poor, underused and of poor quality.

According to the Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) 2006, 44% of women receive antenatal care from skilled birth attendants (SBAs), that is, a doctor or nurse-midwife; only 29% of pregnant women make antenatal care visits during their pregnancy; and less than 19% of births take place with the assistance of SBAs in a health facility, whereas 81% take place at home. Most of these homebirths are assisted by family members, neighbors, or traditional birth attendants who may be trained or untrained; or the woman may be on her own. A large proportion of maternal and neonatal deaths occur during the 24 hours following delivery. In addition, the first two days following delivery are critical for monitoring complications arising from the delivery. However, only one in five (20%) women receive postnatal care within four hours of delivery; slightly more than one in four (27%) receive care within the first 24 hours; and four percent are seen within one or two days following delivery. Each day in Nepal, 12 mothers and 75 babies die in childbirth.

The fact that 67% of maternal deaths take place at home and a further 11% on the way to hospital, coupled with the fact that 47% of deaths are due to postpartum haemorrhage, strengthens the case for skilled attendants both in the community and in accessible institutions (Pathak et al. 1998). Most of the mothers die of severe bleeding, a complication that can be treated even in basic health centers. The maternal mortality ratio (MMR), an indicator of the overall health of a population, stands at 281 deaths per 100,000 births in Nepal (NDHS, 2006). This is among the highest in the world. In comparison, the MMR is 90 in Sri Lanka and just eight per 100,000 in the US, according to the World Health Organization. Similarly, the perinatal mortality rate in Nepal is also one of the highest in the world (75 per 1000 live births). In Nepal, one woman dies every four hours from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. The presence of a midwife could save many of them. Having a skilled professional at birth protects the life of the mother and the child by recognizing problems early, when the situation can still be controlled, and by intervening quickly.

In the 1990s, Nepal invested in two types of health workers to provide maternal/child health services and obstetric first aid at the village level: Maternal and Child Health Workers (MCHW) and Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANM). Neither category of worker has successfully functioned as a skilled birth attendant due to a number of factors. These include inadequate length of the midwifery component of the training; lack of competency-based training; lack of adequate clinical training and experience; professional and social isolation at post; and lack of support from the health system to enable MCHWs and ANMs to provide quality emergency obstetric and neonatal care, especially during life-threatening complications.

Since less than 19% of births take place with the assistance of an SBA, Nepal has a challenge in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health (MDG 4 and 5 respectively) by addressing factors related to various morbidities, death and disability caused by complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The targets for SBAs set for the country are: 40% of all births to be assisted by an SBA by 2005, 50% by 2010, and 60% by 2015. In order to achieve this target by 2015, a total of 4907 SBAs must be in post by 2012 (from 2395 at present) (GON 2007). This is an enormous challenge because currently, as per the internationally accepted definition, only a limited number of health workers in Nepal qualify as SBAs. Furthermore, unequal access to SBAs, depending on the area in which one lives and one’s economic status, is a barrier to achieving these MDG indicators. Fifty-one percent of deliveries in urban areas are attended by a SBA, compared to 14% of births in rural areas (NDHS 2006). Against such a backdrop is a need to produce skilled birth attendants who can proficiently deal with these national maternal and child health issues.

New clues to preventing miscarriage or pre-term births.

• 20 April 2011 by Hayley Crawford and Helen Thomson
• Magazine issue 2809.

MISCARRIAGE and pre-term birth are the two things all parents-to-be worry about. Two studies published this week could help establish why some pregnancies go wrong, and offer hope for new treatments to prevent pregnancies ending this way.

One in five pregnancies end in miscarriage, and the risk increases with the age of the mother. Patricia Hunt and colleagues at Washington State University in Pullman have now identified a surprising contributing factor: a lack of quality control during egg-making.

Hunt's team found that not all of the immature egg cells, or oocytes, produced by mice contain the correct number of chromosomes. Egg or sperm cells divide through a process called meiosis, rather than the mitosis that is typical of cell division elsewhere in the body. There are several checks in place to make sure that meiosis occurs correctly, but Hunt's team found that this process isn't as strictly controlled in eggs as it is in sperm.

Specifically, when the pairs of chromosomes line up at what is called the meiotic spindle at the centre of the parent cell, they should await a chemical signal called the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) before dividing into daughter cells. However, the team found that eggs bend this rule. When they observed eggs dividing in ovaries removed from mice, they noticed that the SAC trigger for cell division waits for most - but not all - of the chromosomes to be lined up correctly. The consequence is either too many or too few chromosomes in the resulting egg cells, which can lead to birth defects or miscarriage (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.003).

The cell division process "is highly conserved between mice and humans", says Hunt, suggesting that the same lack of quality control also applies to us. She reckons that we may be evolutionarily programmed to allow defective cells to divide because eggs are precious. "It is better to try and fail than to simply give up on an egg before it is even fertilised," she says.

As the absence of a control mechanism can only increase the risk of chromosomal abnormality, So Iha Nagaoka, co-author of the study, says that IVF could be adapted to include screening that sorts the bad eggs from the good in a way that the body does not, helping to reduce the risk of miscarriage.

Premature birth is also a distressing experience for parents, and it is this aspect of pregnancy that Justin Fay at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, concentrates on. Some 12 per cent of babies are premature, and caring for them costs the UK £1 billion ($1.64 billion) a year.

Fay and colleagues think they have identified a contributing factor. "Humans have a shorter gestation period relative to their brain and body size than you would expect looking at other primate lineages," he says. This is a result of our large brains and the narrow female pelvis, which mean that in order to maximise the chance of both mother and baby surviving, our gestation period has had to shorten.

The researchers think that this shortening is encoded in the genes involved in birth timing, some of which must have evolved rapidly since we diverged from other apes, to keep up with the growth of our brains.

To find out, the team compared numerous genomes from humans and other primates and pinpointed around 150 likely candidates for genes involved in accelerated birth timing. When the researchers looked for these genes in 328 mothers in Finland they found that variations in a gene called FSHR were more frequent in mothers who gave birth before 37 weeks of gestation. The team says the gene could be a new target for therapeutic measures to prevent pre-term births (PLoS Genetics, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1001365).

"It was surprising to find that FSHR was involved," says Fay. The hormone it controls- follicle stimulating hormone (FSH)- has a well-known function in the establishment of pregnancy rather than the initiation of labour. "It suggests that we should start looking at risk factors for pre-term births much earlier than 25 to 35 weeks into gestation," he says.

David Haig at Harvard University says that it may be significant that the neighbouring gene to FSHR - called LHCGR - is responsible for producing a hormone that helps to maintain a thick uterus during pregnancy. Any variations to FSHR might have a knock-on effect on nearby genes, he suggests.

Chimp births are surprisingly like our own

The process of human birth is unique among primates because the infant emerges with its head facing in the opposite direction from its mother, or so the argument goes. Now, the first close-up videos of three chimpanzee births suggest that theory is wrong. In all three cases, the newborn emerged with its head facing away from the mother (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0214).

It has also been suggested that the orientation of human newborns accounts for another uniquely human aspect of birth- the need for a midwife. Indeed, midwives contacted by New Scientist say that the differences in birth-related mortality rates between countries with good and poor levels of medical care shows the difference their assistance makes.

But this idea may also now be up for revision. Satoshi Hirata at the Great Ape Research Institute of Hayashibara Biochemical Laboratories in Okayama, Japan, who led the study, says that chimps make nests so that they have a safe place to give birth, which could allow this style of birth to occur without assistance.