Safe Birth

Safaa Mousa is a nurse from Sheikh Zuweid. She lives in one of the Bedouin villages in North Sinai, which is known for its unique traditions and customs, especially those related to women. 

As a child, she dreamed of becoming a nurse specialized in obstetrics and gynecology, so she joined the Faculty of Nursing. However, her professional journey came with many challenges. 

After graduation, Safaa realized that she needed more practical and theoretical training alongside her hospital work. She also noticed that the number of deliveries happening in the hospital was quite low. So where were the women giving birth? 

Until recently, women in Bedouin villages in North Sinai were giving birth at home, driven by cultural norms. The family relied mainly on the “daya” or traditional birth attendant — an experienced woman who usually inherited her profession through generations and was called upon to assist women during childbirth. 

Due to limited resources and health knowledge for handling different delivery scenarios, many women used to lose their babies — and sometimes their own lives. 

Safaa recalls that she had to handle many delivery cases with almost no resources: “Once I received a call about a first-time mother in labor. There was no electricity for 14 days, and I had to deliver the baby under the light of a kerosene lamp.” 

Despite the difficulty of the situation, Safaa felt a mix of achievement and a strong desire to learn more so that she could help women in such difficult conditions. As the demand for home births increased, her husband encouraged her to get the official license to work as a certified midwife. 

Safaa joined the UNICEF-supported training in Ismailia in 2022 and was among the first batch of 22 licensed midwives. Since completing the first course, she has safely delivered 24 women in their homes. 

Over time, Safaa felt she needed more training in maternal and newborn care. However, she and her colleagues in health units and hospitals in North Sinai always faced the same challenge: “I have a house and children, so it’s hard to travel often for training. That’s why it made a huge difference when they started organizing the training here in Sheikh Zuweid.” 

The Ministry of Health in cooperation with UNICEF and with support from the European Union, organized a series of training sessions in North Sinai for midwives to raise awareness about issues such as low delivery and breastfeeding rates, maternal and newborn care, and family planning. These trainings also improved midwives’ delivery skills — both in hospitals and at home — and helped them educate pregnant women and mothers on how to maintain their health and the health of their babies. 

Safaa says she has helped change many women’s misconceptions about childbirth and breastfeeding thanks to the knowledge and communication techniques she learned during the training. 

She also gained the trust of many families who found in trained midwives the perfect balance between their cultural preference of having a woman supervise the birth, and the reassurance that she is professionally trained to manage home births safely — and to identify when hospital transfer is necessary. 

Thanks to the generous support from BPRM, the Government of Germany, Canada, Japan, and the EU, UNICEF also supported the Ministry of Health by providing essential lifesaving supplies and vaccines. These supplies aim to enhance the capacity of hospitals and primary healthcare facilities designated for the care of medically evacuated individuals from Gaza.