Nepalese data

The FCHV provide, after a short training from Government Nepal, some basic care and education in the villages, with the focus on mother- and childcare and contraception. Of great importance is the direct communication with all women in the own mother group of each FCHV.¹

FCHVs provide information on causes, signs/symptoms of POP and can advise women to seek further health care at the peripheral health facility. The training curriculum for FCHVs (2010 revision) contains 20 substantial chapters with a huge amount of information. The one on POP defines the condition, the causes and ways to prevent it. Since 2003 volunteers should receive a five-day “refresher” training every five years. Anyhow volunteers told Amnesty International that their knowledge of uterine prolapse was not sufficient.²

The curriculum for training new FCHVs (2010 revision) defines POP and lists for its causes: pregnancy under 18, insufficient nutrition, giving birth every year, carrying loads after childbirth and lack of a skilled birth attendant. It informs the Volunteers that to prevent uterine prolapse, women should marry and have a baby after the age of 20, eat sufficient nutritious food, leave two years between children, avoid pressing the abdomen during labour, not carry loads and take sufficient rest after the delivery.²