In partnership with an Egyptian NGO, Médecins du Monde has launched an access to care programme aimed at young pregnant girls and teenage mothers living on the streets of Cairo.
According to the UNICEF and the Egyptian NGO, Hope Village Society, the number of children living in the streets of the Egyptian capital fluctuates between 15,000 and 20,000. If the permanent mobility of these children complicates data collection, one thing is for sure: the number of children increases in direct correlation with the country’s difficult socio-economic conditions.
Conditions of girls on the street
Young mothers living on the streets with their babies seems to be a recent and increasingly common phenomenon in Cairo. In a few cases girls have fled their families to live on the streets because of an early, out-of-marriage pregnancy; but most often the pregnancy is a consequence of a girl’s life on the streets.
For these young girls, access to mother and infant health care is very restricted. On top of this, girls living in the streets commonly suffer from physical and sexual violence, mental health problems, dermatological conditions, respiratory infections or malnutrition and anaemia.
Pregnancy among very young girls is considered taboo in Egypt, and as pregnant girls are left without antenatal care, the risk of mortality of both mother and child increases. These pregnant girls and teenager mothers do not have access to either residential birth clinics or to other health services for post-natal check-ups, despite that fact that these are normally public services. Once the young mother has delivered, she must again return to life on the streets where the chances of survival for an infant are very weak, which often means they have to abandon their children.
In order to prevent a second generation of children from being born and growing up on the street, taking responsibility for the teenage mothers on the street globally is therefore a priority.
A programme aimed at a population group left to its own devices
Since August 2005, MdM has supported the NGO Hope Village Society with the introduction of a birth clinic and rehabilitation centre, located in the new area of "Ramadan 10 " in the north of Cairo. This birth clinic and protection centre together form a pilot project for young mothers and their children, giving them access to healthcare and psychosocial support following absence of postnatal and primary health care. This is aimed to encourage reproductive health and hygiene. The young girls will also be given the chance profit from legal support, vocational training and a course in literacy. Children under the age of six will be able to remain with their mother in the centres, while the older children will be given education. Upon their departure, Hope Village helps young mothers with reintegrating into their social situations.
Simultaneously, with the aim of fighting stigmatisation, social workers from the Egyptian organisation work to raise awareness among communities in the surrounding districts to the problems that young girls face on the streets.
"As much as it is medical and educational, our project also aims to raise awareness among local people about these issues. Here, NGOs are taking on these roles in the absence of public structures" summarises Raul Heimann, in charge of the project.
Throughout the course of the year, MdM and Hope Village will also open a mobile, private clinic to approach girls on the streets. This unit will travel in a dozen districts often visited by young girls, with a doctor, two nurses, a psychologist and social workers.