Guest Speaker and Local midwife Mary Doyle is hoping to continue to raise more funds to buy supplies for mothers and babies in Uganda. A local midwife and family health nurse is sharing her 30 years of experience to the extreme to come face to face with startling poverty and a devastating lack of health and education in Uganda. Mary spent 5 weeks working as a midwife in Fort Portal Referal Hospital, a government hospital in Uganda, that regularly has a waiting room of around 300 pregnant women every day. She faced many challenges working in conditions and with equipment far less favouable than we would expect here in Australia. Mary is a member of the local Murray Valley Sanctuary Refugee Group and has contact with a few Congolese and Sudanese families in the area. Through this connection she has  learnt what hardship they’ve come from and what severe poverty there is in places like Uganda, Congo and Sudan. She knew her assitance and expertise would only be a drop in the ocean, but wanted to experience it and see if she could help in some small way. Mary said she expected to see some confronting scenes as the many differences between Australian women and those of third world countries became immediately apparent. She experienced a maternal death, which is virtually unknown here in Australia, common over there, and foetal deaths as well. Mary mentioned that women in these areas are having not just two or three babies, but eight, nine, 10 and 11 because they don’t have the education, they don’t have access to family planning and they’re still very primitive in many ways… many of the women were young teenagers. Only a few of them come to the hospital to have their babies. Many of them still give birth at home with traditional midwives. The ones who come to the hospital are often the ones who have been in labour for a few days and are in real trouble. The poorest areas of the country are in the north, where poverty incidence is consistently above 40 per cent and exceeds 60 per cent in many districts – and where outbreaks of civil strife have disrupted farmers’ lives and agricultural production. In 2012, Uganda ranked 161st among 187 countries on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index, in the Low Human Development category. The lack of resources is also shocking, with no linen and no food provided for the mothers. Medical supplies are also desperately needed … since her return Mary has continued her efforts to raise funds for additional supplies … she says every little bit helps … “The poverty is so bad and it’s easy for us to forget”