Happy, cheerful and playful, this is how María Elena remembers her childhood in the district of Comas, with a series of characteristics that were overshadowed in recent years.
In mid-2021, she was working in the care of an elderly man, an activity that allowed her to generate income to pay for the school education of her two daughters. However, one day dizziness, nausea and loss of appetite warned her that her life was about to change for the third time.
As a single mother, Maria Elena knew that her main sources of income depended on combining different jobs, such as cleaning and cooking, activities that she saw limited soon after confirming she was pregnant.
“I felt very sad, lonely, down. I knew I had to move on, I looked for work and was unsuccessful. No one would hire a pregnant woman,” Maria Elena recalls wistfully. To the job uncertainty was added a separation process with her then partner, factors that ended up affecting her mental health and lead her to a depressive and anxious condition.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 15.6% of women in developing countries experience some type of mental disorder, mainly depression, during pregnancy. In Maria Elena’s case, these conditions also led her to neglect her diet, which resulted in anemia and subsequent infection with COVID-19. Her quality of life had worsened considerably.
Healthy parenthood: the SES commitment
María Elena and the Socios En Salud (SES) team met when she was two months pregnant, thanks to a call for help. There was still time to reduce risk factors prenatally.
The district of Carabayllo, where Maria Elena still lives today, is not only considered the largest in the capital, it is also one of the districts with the highest maternal mortality rates in northern Lima. To address this problem, SES intervenes in four health facilities to strengthen maternal and neonatal health from gestation to puerperium; one of them is the Health Center (CC.SS.) La Flor, where Maria Elena started taking her prenatal checkups.
“They have been very compassionate, supportive and very professional, I felt listened to by them,” recalls María Elena about the months she received mental health care, psychoprophylaxis sessions, counseling and monitoring through SES’s Maternal Health and Mental Health programs, as well as food baskets and vouchers from the Social Protection Program.
Alongside María Elena was also Indira, community agent of SES, who through accompaniment strategies watched over the integral wellbeing of her and the child she was expecting. Thanks to all these joint actions, Abdiel was born healthy through natural childbirth on February 01, 2022, at 8 months and weighing 3.500 kilos.
A more hopeful present
More than a year later, Maria Elena reflects on the importance of having attended to her mental health in time to ensure a healthy pregnancy: “Unlike my previous pregnancies, this time I proved that despite the adversities that came my way, I never fainted. I fell down and got back up. And I showed everyone that my greatest strength is my children,” she explains.
Currently, she lives a responsible and risk-free motherhood alongside Abdiel, who is up to date on his well-baby checkups and enjoying a healthy diet. In this way, SES reinforces a commitment it has had since its foundation: to prioritize the health needs of women, children and adolescents to ensure the development of an equitable and just society.
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