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Climate change and maternal care
148 Plays3 months ago
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May contain explicit language and unfounded accusations.
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Transcript
Perception and Climate Challenges for Women in the Middle East
00:00:01
Mothers of all Crime
We're here again to take a bite out of crime. How are we doing, Crystal?
00:00:05
Krystal
I'm good. How are you?
00:00:08
Mothers of all Crime
Excellent, excellent. Interested to hear what you got to say to me.
00:00:12
Krystal
i know. So this week we're going to do a little bit more of a climate and how it affects women.
00:00:20
Mothers of all Crime
o
00:00:21
Krystal
Also an international one.
Climate Change Impact on Pakistan: Extreme Heat and Monsoons
00:00:24
Krystal
So I feel like everyone has this mindset on women in the Middle East and And over the years, it's kind of had a tough opinion because everyone remembers like the war in Iraq and all of that.
00:00:44
Krystal
But women in that area are just slowly and slowly kind of becoming more oppressed, in my opinion.
00:00:54
Mothers of all Crime
Mm-hmm.
00:00:54
Krystal
And one thing that isn't talked about often is the women who are giving birth in this area. And recently something came out in the news regarding climate and the climate impact over in Pakistan and how it's affecting mothers.
00:01:13
Krystal
So Pakistan is one of the top five countries that's been most affected with the climate change.
Health Risks for Pregnant Women in Pakistan: Heat and Healthcare Access
00:01:20
Krystal
And this past summer, the temperatures there are getting up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:01:28
Krystal
And for anybody who has ever stood outside, I get hot in like 90 degree weather.
00:01:29
Mothers of all Crime
Wow.
00:01:37
Krystal
I can't even wrap my head around what 122, standard, like the feeling just standard 122. like the feeling of it just standard
00:01:45
Mothers of all Crime
Oh my gosh.
00:01:46
Krystal
hundred and twenty two
00:01:48
Mothers of all Crime
What's the real feel like? 150? 150?
00:01:50
Krystal
i I can't even tell you because everywhere is just so astounded that it hit 50 degrees Celsius, 122 degrees Fahrenheit that they're like, it doesn't even matter at that point.
00:02:00
Mothers of all Crime
Yikes.
00:02:02
Mothers of all Crime
Yikes.
00:02:03
Krystal
And putting it perspective, your body goes into heat stroke at 104. So what's... so
00:02:08
Krystal
what
00:02:08
Mothers of all Crime
i think I think mine does it sooner than that.
00:02:10
Mothers of all Crime
I think mine's at like 95. I'm in heat stroke.
00:02:13
Krystal
Yeah. And like, that's the thing is like, it varies for person to person. And now taking these temperatures on top of that, the monsoon season is in that area. And according to locals, they've been getting worse and worse over the years.
00:02:27
Krystal
The floods are decimating towns, making them completely uninhabitable. They have refugees in their own country.
Role and Challenges of Midwives in Pakistan
00:02:36
Krystal
And now imagine you're pregnant.
00:02:39
Krystal
you're about to give birth.
00:02:42
Krystal
One out of three women over there have zero access to any healthcare and less than half of them give birth in a hospital. Pakistan has the highest rate of infant mortality in the world, having a infant die every two minutes and a mother dies every hour.
00:03:04
Krystal
Which absolutely just blows my mind.
00:03:05
Mothers of all Crime
wow
00:03:08
Krystal
And these women are trying to kind of proact their situation. so there's a new school that's training a couple hundred midwives to send across the country.
00:03:22
Krystal
to try and help them. But these women are being sent to these really poor, decimated communities that have low education. They're illiterate. They don't trust outsiders with education.
00:03:36
Krystal
And they're homeless, they're displaced, they're just trying to survive. And most of the Wind Wives are talking about their their advice to them is just drink water, stay hydrated.
00:03:47
Krystal
Like the bare necessities that I think we all take for granted, that's their advice.
00:03:53
Mothers of all Crime
Right. But they may not even have access to
00:03:55
Krystal
Right, 100%. hundred percent They're struggling to eat, let alone drink, let alone nourish their bodies properly.
Training Midwives: Limited Resources and Basic Advice
00:04:05
Mothers of all Crime
Especially in the heat.
00:04:06
Krystal
Mm-hmm.
00:04:07
Mothers of all Crime
I mean, anyone who's been pregnant can tell you like August is the worst month because you're so hot already. And then you're it's very hot outside. But i mean, I've never experienced 122 degrees. So I can only imagine that's 10 times worse when you're pregnant.
00:04:24
Krystal
Yeah, and pregnant and now giving birth at home with no assistance, no care, no medical attention for your entire pregnancy. Like it that alone has its risks.
00:04:38
Krystal
Now adding on the heat and the monsoons and the fears of giving
Cultural Norms and Healthcare Access for Women
00:04:44
Krystal
birth in that situation. And then once you have your baby, knowing in the back of your head that it might not survive because of the conditions you live in.
00:04:55
Mothers of all Crime
Yeah.
00:04:55
Krystal
which every two minutes, that's...
00:04:59
Mothers of all Crime
I mean, it makes you think too, like, are these children being born premature because of the heat? Because if you're extremely dehydrated, you're going to start having contractions if you're pregnant.
00:05:09
Mothers of all Crime
And so if, especially if they're not getting medical care, I wonder how many people even solidly know how far along they are. i mean, maybe if you have a perfect menstrual cycle and you're tracking it diligently you would know but most people don't and it's just sort of a guess and then even when you get a due date it's an estimate but if you're severely dehydrated you could go into premature labor at any time so
00:05:33
Krystal
Yeah.
00:05:35
Mothers of all Crime
i and that's going to be a factor especially if you're giving birth at home and there's no access to nicu there's no ah access to anything uh
00:05:43
Krystal
Yeah. yeah And so I was watching interviews of the midwives who have been dispersed into different parts of the country, talking to these women and asking just very basic questions that I feel like most In a, in the society we live in most women can answer, how old are you?
00:06:04
Krystal
How long have you been pregnant? How old is your baby? How many pregnancies have you had?
00:06:08
Mothers of all Crime
and
00:06:10
Krystal
These are things that these women were estimating. good Where, how old are you? 26 or 27? How your baby? i don't know, five to six months.
00:06:21
Krystal
How long have you been pregnant? No idea. Okay. And these culturally, they're expected to have as many children as possible to have these large families.
00:06:33
Krystal
And there are a couple of that. When you ask them, how many children do you have?
Religious Beliefs Impact on Women's Healthcare
00:06:39
Krystal
One woman was like, I had eight. Five have survived.
00:06:42
Mothers of all Crime
Ugh. Ugh. oh
00:06:45
Krystal
Right. And it's just gut wrenching because you're looking at her and she says it so nonchalantly, like, because it's normal to them. It's that, well, i I've had all of these, but.
00:06:54
Mothers of all Crime
Well, that's her reality.
00:06:56
Krystal
Mm hmm.
00:06:57
Mothers of all Crime
you know like that's That's the life that she is living where she's lost her children. And it's also, if you don't have access to doctors and medicine, you don't have access to reliable birth control.
00:07:08
Mothers of all Crime
So even if you theoretically weren't going to have as many children and as you possibly could, you may not even have... That option within your family, within your marriage, because it may not be an option to get reliable birth control.
00:07:22
Mothers of all Crime
So you're just stuck.
00:07:22
Krystal
Right. And that's where birth control gets sticky because you have some articles supporting that Islam as a religion, foundationally, you have some saying abortions are allowed, birth control is allowed, you do what's in the best interest of the mother.
00:07:42
Krystal
But then you have some more fundamentalist sites saying that none of that is allowed, Birth control is not allowed. Abortions aren't allowed. You're only allowed to do what your husband tells you.
00:07:54
Mothers of all Crime
yeah I mean, definitely...
00:07:55
Krystal
So it's tough because I think it depends on what world you're living in Are you living in the elite society or are you living in a more hostile area are you just trying to make it day by day?
00:08:09
Krystal
Like it seems like there's a very vast spread in the country when it comes to those specific things.
00:08:19
Mothers of all Crime
Controlling women goes hand in hand with religion a lot of the time, and definitely there can be different interpretations. My understanding is that in Islam and Judaism, abortion and birth control are okay, but I think that if you're in a submissive, patriarchal kind of situation where you don't have autonomy, he can make whatever decision and justify it however he needs to, and I think you can...
00:08:49
Krystal
Yeah.
00:08:49
Mothers of all Crime
spin things how you need to but also I just meant they may literally not have it they may not be able to get it even if he wanted to get it yeah
00:08:54
Krystal
Yeah. Right. That too. Yeah. Because I think that's the the fundamentalism that we see in any religion. um it becomes the most extreme version of said religion.
00:09:07
Mothers of all Crime
and it's usually to oppress women in some form that's often what it is
00:09:10
Krystal
Oh, yeah. I completely agree. So given the fact we now establish that they don't really have the access, like how little access is there?
00:09:23
Krystal
And a couple of the stats that I found are some have never seen doctors in their entire lives until these midwives started dispersing around the country.
Midwives as OB-GYN Substitutes: Overwhelming Responsibilities
00:09:33
Krystal
And they did one interview with an OBGYN and she is responsible for 40,000 women. One.
00:09:40
Krystal
person, 40,000 women.
00:09:42
Mothers of all Crime
That's crazy.
00:09:43
Krystal
one one person forty
00:09:46
Mothers of all Crime
There's one?
00:09:46
Krystal
thousand women
00:09:49
Mothers of all Crime
Wow.
00:09:50
Krystal
And I'm sitting here like, i I don't even think I've talked to 40,000 people in my life, let alone being responsible for that many people.
00:09:58
Mothers of all Crime
I have no... I just have like no concept of how many people that even... it i That's a lot. That's a lot of anything. But that's a ton of patience.
00:10:10
Krystal
Yeah. And.
00:10:11
Mothers of all Crime
And I'm just thinking of the volume of patients I see and it's nowhere near that. It doesn't make sense to me. The math doesn't.
00:10:18
Krystal
right
00:10:19
Mothers of all Crime
But I guess she's not really seeing them much.
00:10:21
Krystal
Right. And on top of that, you have her, she does one year rotations. So where she is right now for those 40,000 women, she's only available to them for a year and then she leaves.
00:10:32
Krystal
And there's no promise that there's going to be someone who is going to take her spot.
00:10:39
Krystal
So I think that's why they're pushing these midwives through this new education program is so that you might not have an OB b there, but the midwife is a pretty good second.
00:10:39
Mothers of all Crime
That's terrifying.
00:10:45
Mothers of all Crime
Sure.
00:10:49
Krystal
And if you can get least access, that's better than nothing.
00:10:55
Mothers of all Crime
Absolutely. i definitely agree with that. I mean, I think midwives are great. And I think that especially for a home birth situation, like that's probably who you need. OBGYN is not going to really deliver you at home.
00:11:07
Krystal
And I think also for people who are living in those kind of communities, they might be a little bit more trusting of someone like a midwife than someone who has a, quote, fancy education.
00:11:21
Krystal
That they might be a little bit more receptive to someone who is just like them from a poor community who did this and not the high elite person who went to college and university and...
00:11:36
Krystal
I don't know. for I just feel like maybe they might be more receptive to midwives in those more like remote places. But...
00:11:44
Mothers of all Crime
Maybe. What's the training like for the midwives, though? I guess kind of minimal.
00:11:47
Krystal
It was only a year.
00:11:48
Mothers of all Crime
Because here it's a lot.
00:11:49
Krystal
yeah Which I also thought was crazy.
00:11:50
Mothers of all Crime
That's quick.
00:11:52
Krystal
But again, if you're just trying to get anything, it's better than nothing. so
00:11:57
Mothers of all Crime
For sure.
00:11:57
Krystal
But yeah, the midwife training is one year. And from here in the US, the training is like a whole other college degree. it's I did a little research. like Penn State has one of the top midwifery schools in the country, which I thought was interesting. I never would have guessed that.
00:12:14
Krystal
Yeah. um But also like really hard to get into. who
00:12:20
Mothers of all Crime
Oh, yeah. They're extremely competitive programs. Being a midwife is basically being a doctor. it's a lot of It's a lot of school. And then when you're done with school, you're still not done. Like you have to intern and observe. And it's it's a lengthy process.
00:12:33
Mothers of all Crime
But I guess they're just trying to basically have paramedics and doulas there if it's a year.
00:12:37
Krystal
ah Yeah.
00:12:40
Krystal
Yeah, I think it's, I think that's the thought is like, let's do, if we have this immediate crisis, how do we address it in the immediate and get that number down?
00:12:41
Mothers of all Crime
Something's better than nothing.
00:12:52
Krystal
Because I think they're starting to realize they have countries that are considered beneath them that have death rates nowhere near theirs.
00:13:05
Krystal
So having to do something.
Innovative Healthcare Initiatives: Subsidizing Free Births
00:13:08
Krystal
And the other thing that they started doing was they started opening those remote clinics with the midwives, but the higher, ah more elite hospitals, every once in a while actually have started to open their doors for extreme emergency cases.
00:13:25
Krystal
And will allow the poor women to come in and give birth for free. And they're actually setting it up where the rich are starting to pay a little bit more. So that it will pay for the poor to have their babies in the hospital.
00:13:38
Krystal
Which i it surprised me. I feel like a lot of the time you don't have them openly being like, well, no, we're going to charge you more so someone else can have their baby here.
00:13:49
Krystal
It's normally a lot more secretive than that. Like a little sneaky.
00:13:54
Krystal
And in this situation.
00:13:54
Mothers of all Crime
I mean, it's kind of an idea of universal health care, right?
00:13:57
Krystal
Yeah. Yeah. And so in these circumstances, it's it's far and few between, but I think it's a nice step in the right direction where they're like... If you absolutely have to, we will help you.
00:13:57
Mothers of all Crime
Where it's like, we're we're all going to pay in.
00:14:10
Krystal
But like, at least they're opening the door now because before they'd be like, well, if you can't pay, you can't come or you aren't wealthy enough or you aren't in the right society. Now, at least if they are aware, that might be an option, which is kind of nice that they're putting an effort.
00:14:31
Mothers of all Crime
Definitely.
Climate Crisis Impact on Prenatal Care: Need for Improvement
00:14:32
Mothers of all Crime
I mean, that is tragic and I hope the situation improves over there.
00:14:37
Krystal
So from i'm curious what your point of view is with with like that one on one. So you have these women who don't trust outsiders, don't trust medical personnel because they're just not educated. They don't understand what's being communicated to them.
00:14:55
Krystal
um And then you have people coming in trying to tell them what to do with basic information, but you have so few of them. how How do you think that it's going to actually work out?
00:15:06
Krystal
Because if you have 40,000 people and one or two people trying to help them, for someone who doesn't understand how that works, that doesn't seem feasible.
00:15:16
Mothers of all Crime
Well, it's a, I mean,
00:15:21
Mothers of all Crime
The issue is that prenatal care is important and it's also complex and it's not like there's just, you can have one visit with a midwife and that's going to cover your prenatal care for your whole pregnancy.
00:15:33
Mothers of all Crime
So I think it's about being realistic. And I think if I wanted to improve the situation, I would definitely make sure prenatal vitamins were available. And i that's also why I'm personally a believer in like prenatal universal health care and that people deserve health care and that it's not something that you should have to purchase because especially for pregnant women it should just be automatically included which i know is maybe controversial, but that's that's how I feel about it. And I think that prenatal vitamins need to be available.
00:16:06
Mothers of all Crime
Clean drinking water in large quantities needs to be available. Probably air conditioning in the homes would be very helpful. And i I mean, people need to be tested for all different types of problems because if you're not seeing a medical provider and you develop symptoms of preeclampsia or cholestasis or gestational diabetes,
00:16:29
Mothers of all Crime
There's all kinds of comorbidities that can come up that can really complicate a pregnancy and result in a very ill mother and a very ill baby and definitely maternal and fetal mortality. And...
00:16:44
Mothers of all Crime
i'm The real risk of prematurity is there, the lack of aftercare as well. um So basically the si the the situation would have to improve where we put a lot more resources and everyone goes to the doctor all the time.
00:16:51
Krystal
Yeah.
00:17:01
Mothers of all Crime
Because that's what you need to do when you're pregnant. Like it's it's a burden, honestly, because it's a lot of work to be pregnant and to do all of the prenatal care that you're actually supposed to do is a lot of work.
00:17:14
Krystal
Right. Yeah.
00:17:15
Mothers of all Crime
and But if you're just trying to have as many children as possible and you don't maybe expect all of them to survive, I don't know, maybe it's less of a priority. But I just, there's no simple solution to something like that.
00:17:30
Krystal
Yeah. And I think that even though they're doing their best to get access to even midwives or and minimal care access, when you're dealing with this climate crisis on top of it, where...
00:17:46
Krystal
It's so hot you can't even walk down the street. It's raining so bad that you're more concerned that your house isn't going to be there in the morning, let alone going to a doctor's appointment.
00:17:57
Krystal
I think having this climate crisis on top of the pre-existing like maternal issues and medical issues that they have is just doubling down on these these women are having a really hard time, but nobody wants to talk about it.
00:18:17
Mothers of all Crime
Well, thank goodness for us. We're here to talk about that.
00:18:20
Krystal
Obviously.
00:18:23
Mothers of all Crime
I mean, it's just so terribly, terribly sad.
Conclusion: Addressing Challenges in Women's Healthcare Due to Climate Change
00:18:26
Mothers of all Crime
And I feel bad for anyone that's pregnant in less than ideal circumstances because it's also hard to be pregnant even in amazing circumstances.
00:18:37
Mothers of all Crime
So for them to be dealing with such harsh environmental issues as well as like poverty and all other like it must be extremely stressful and don't know my heart goes out to them
00:18:53
Krystal
Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, that was my little recap of the climate crisis that we had. um thought that was a kind of interesting one taking, i wouldn't have thought about the weather being such an impact until I read that article.
00:19:10
Krystal
So do you have any final thoughts?
00:19:13
Mothers of all Crime
yeah I mean, it's just sort of terrifying to think about how the increasingly worse climate issues are going to really be impacting everyone everywhere.
00:19:26
Mothers of all Crime
And the temperature rising globally is scary.
00:19:32
Krystal
Yeah. And I think it's even kind of gotten all over the place where growing up, at least where we are, it was always like, okay, by this month, it's going to start doing this. And and it was pretty consistent.
00:19:47
Krystal
And now like it was 75 degrees a couple days ago, and now it's like 40 something. like it's just i can't It feels more all over the place.
00:19:57
Krystal
And when you take it to an extreme, like these people are dealing with, i I give them credit for trying to do something, but it's so hard to fight a battle on two fronts is really kind of where they're at, I feel.
00:20:14
Mothers of all Crime
Yeah, because it's it's not really solvable. It's not like they can fix the weather at this point. and
00:20:20
Krystal
And just flip the switch.
00:20:22
Mothers of all Crime
Yeah, so it's like you just have to deal with your circumstances while you're having them. But it's this is an extremely difficult situation.
00:20:32
Krystal
Yeah. Well, yeah, hopefully they figure it out.
00:20:35
Mothers of all Crime
It's a good topic, though. I enjoyed it.
00:20:39
Krystal
Hopefully the midwives are going to be beneficial to the more remote areas and their rates will go down because I think it's really sad. All
00:20:48
Mothers of all Crime
Oh yeah.
00:20:51
Krystal
right. Well, thank you for coming to our news chats for a little bite and i hope you have a great day.
00:20:57
Mothers of all Crime
little bite of crime. Okay. All right. Talk soon.
00:21:02
Krystal
Talk soon.