Every year in India, about 78,000 women don’t survive giving birth, and a million babies die in their first month. But in the village of Devpuri—and in thousands of other rural villages and urban slums touched by PATH’s Sure Start project—ordinary people are using simple yet ingenious tools to make mothers and babies safer. We’re telling some of their stories of initiative and resilience in a new special web feature. And on the blog today, we invite you to meet Ramsajeevan, a young father who learned from a very unlikely source how to keep his wife and baby safe.
Ramsajeevan and his daughter, Depika. Photo: PATH/Gabe Bienczycki.
“This was my first child,” says 25-year-old Ramsajeevan, remembering the birth of his daughter Depika, “and I was scared senseless.”
Ramsajeevan knew the risks. Four of his seven siblings died as infants. His mother gave birth at home without skilled help, and his father kept his distance, believing childbirth wasn’t his place. When it came to protecting their son’s child, neither of Ramsajeevan’s parents had any words of wisdom.
The advice Ramsajeevan needed came from an unlikely source—a letter from his baby-to-be.
“My child told me the danger signs of pregnancy,” he says. Continue reading
