HOLIDAYS are usually a chance to put thoughts of work to one side, recharge the batteries and chill out – all the more so if your job involves long shifts and life-or-death decisions.

However Colchester midwives Annie and her colleague and Anne Lines’s recent break was anything but chilled out.

The pair willingly gave up two weeks to travel to Bangladesh and share their skills and experience with their counterparts in the Third World country.

Now back from the trip, the friends have been talking about their experiences for International Day of the Midwife.

They went to Bangladesh to help the charity Popi (People’s Orientated Programme Implementation), providing maternity care as part of its projects to help people living in extreme poverty.

The country has high infant and mother mortality rates and this is something the charity hopes to reduce through education and bringing in more resources.

The charity cares for women giving birth and has also provided flood relief, helped children out of child labour, provided education for children in remote and very poor areas and given healthcare for those in some of the poorest areas of Bangladesh.

Anne Lines explains: “It has many projects running and the particular one we were involved in was called Dream (Development and Rehabilitation of Extreme Poor through Alternative Means).

“Popi did a survey and targeted the areas of extreme poverty and has provided help over ten years.

“This project is to get people to be independent and at a sustainable level from a point where they start with nothing – no home, no work, no money.”

The midwives travelled about 80 miles north-east of Dhaka to Kishoreganj, to join a project looking after about 14,000 families in that area.

Working alongside four paramedics, they helped care for families in clinics, held at least once a month, in the homes of villagers.

“The paramedics are educated to GCSE level and then have a further one year’s training. They are often the first port of call for medical care.

Anne says: “Annie and I were there to support them and give advice where appropriate. We provided teaching sessions for emergency skills and general health and wellbeing for mothers and babies.

“Within the area, there are 104 traditional birth attendants who actually deliver the babies.

“Our aim was to provide further teaching sessions to the birth attendants because they are the people who are most likely to be faced with life threatening situations to mothers and their babies.

“On a personal level, the trip was a tremendous adventure, entering a totally different culture and environment. And on a professional level, it left us feeling we could do more to help.

“For example, we plan to return to train the traditional birth attendants in modern emergency procedures. We have provided a basic health record pregnant women can take with them to each antenatal appointment and we are trying to ship delivery beds no longer needed at Colchester to government hospitals in Bangladesh.

Not surprisingly, the two midwives found things were done quite a lot differently in Bangladesh to the procedures they were used to in north Essex.

Expectant mums get just one scan, rather than the two British mothers can expect. It is offered at seven months but very few take up the offer because of the cost and cultural beliefs.

In fact, only those living in the area covered by the charity currently get any kind of pre-natal care and those who do are treated using equipment past its prime, or not working properly, the Essex pair found.

Annie, who has been a midwife for years, says: “They had rusty beds for the mums and the scales didn’t work.

Anne, from Frinton, who re-trained as a midwife just over two years ago after raising her family, adds: “We want to be able to teach the professionals more about how to cope with emergency situations – how to spot the signs early if a mother needs to go to hospital and that sort of thing – and also to detect things like post-partum haemorrhaging,”

Annie and Anne have been speaking about their experiences to colleagues at Colchester General Hospital, and even dressed up in traditional Bangladeshi clothes for a special presentation.

They will also start fundraising shortly to fund their return to Bangladesh.

Annie explains: “We feel this trip was all about identifying the problems and what needed to be done to help.

“Now we need to go back, to put those improvements in place – or there would have been no point in going in the first place.

“I think the long-term hope for the charity is to build its own maternity hospital, so we are starting to put aside things we no longer need to ship over, for use now, and when the hospital opens.”