Mary Jo Terrill is on the Board of Advisors for Maternova.  This is her photo of a midwife and a newborn.  She travels to Rwanda with Network4Africa and has noted exactly what she carries with her when she goes overseass.  She's agreed to share her words here:

The clinic at Ntarama, Rwanda, is up and running....fully operational. The Maternity Center on the same grounds will be open soon as well, managing births and caring for women and infants. I can hardly wait to go there in the Spring.

When I travel to Africa I take a large suitcase filled with medicines, syringes, gauze, gloves, cord clamps, scissors, flashlights, a stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, etc. When traveling from the clinic to the houses in the village nearby for births ( because many women cannot travel to the clinic to give birth) I fill a large back-pack with supplies.   Adequate light is a huge need in most places. ( I insisted that they put skylights in every room of the clinic so that at least during the day we would have enough light.) We are always short of linens.......flannel or cotton....to put under a woman during birth for a clean surface. Hand sanitizing gel keeps our hands as clean as possible.

We're interested in knowing (and sharing) as much as we can about the thousands of professionals who spend part of their time overseas providing services and training to nurses and midwives.