Two Sudanese Midwives

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Periodical article

Title:	Two Sudanese Midwives
Author:	Sharkey, Heather J.
Year:	1998
Periodical:	Sudanic Africa
Volume:	9
Pages:	19-38
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Sudan
Subjects:	condominiums midwives History and Exploration Women's Issues Health and Nutrition Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Cultural Roles Health, Nutrition, and Medicine Labor and Employment
Abstract:	In 1921 the Midwifery Training School was founded in Omdurman, Sudan, to teach new, hygienic techniques to Sudanese midwives. Midwives who completed the programme returned to their homes to practise. Many maintained contact with the school's founder, Mabel Wolff. In 1931, for example, the midwife al-.h¯ajja Zaynab of .Half¯a wrote to Miss Wolff seeking advice on the care of syphilitic babies. Her letter, reproduced in Arabic and followed by an English translation, provides a glimpse into the problem of congenital syphilis. A second document reproduced here, again in Arabic with an English translation, is an interview with Bat¯ul Mu.hammad 'Is¯a, an early graduate of the Midwifery Training School, published in the Khartoum newspaper '¯Akhar khabar' on 25 October 1995. The interview, supplemented by details from British sources, has enabled the author to reconstruct something of Bat¯ul's biography, no mean feat in light of the paucity of information on individual Sudanese working women in the Anglo-Egyptian period. Both items are based on documentation at the Sudan archives in Durham. Notes, ref.