In this room I have delivered more babies than I can count. Spartan by western standards, the room seems to trouble health professionals in the US. But, the truth is that infant mortatility in Botswana is one of the lowest in Africa. And, this is a vast leap forward from what little the country had 25 years ago. This is a standard delivery room at a rural clinic. We can handle uncomplicated pregnancies here. All of the hospitals have much more at their disposals and are equipped surgical level delivery rooms for c-sections and have units for critical care neonates. If at the clinic any abnormalities are discovered during prenatal care, we send them to the hospital to deliver. If there is trouble at the clinic during delivery we have an ambulance and driver on stand by to transport the patient to the hospital. More often than not clinic level deliveries go according to plan. Actually, what is keeping the infant mortatility rate elevated in Botswana is not the level of health care but the prevalence of HIV and AIDS.
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