Mark your calendars for TWO very important dates:

- Tues, Sept 21, 5 pm, "PROSAMI presents "Women in the CONGO:
Health Care at it's Worst... But Getting Better!"

Dr. Barbara Parker will share her experiences in the Eastern Congo,
followed -by Agnes Kanyanya and her stories of Kasai Orientale
province and what PROSAMI is doing in the Western Congo

Location : McLeod Hall School of Nursing, University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA

- Sat, Oct. 9th, 9:15 a.m. - PROSAMI 5 K FUN RUN

All proceeds go directly to support PROSAMI efforts in the CONGO.

Registration is free for FUN RUN, but each runner is asked to get pledges for
her / his running. These pledge donations will be send directly to support
our fourteen nurse midwive candidates in the CONGO, as they embark on their
educational journey. Course is a leisurely one over gently rolling hills, through
a mature hardwood forest,and around several bubbling creeks.

Location: McIntire Park, Shelter # 2, off Route 250 East Bypass in Charlottesville, VA.

Dear friends of PROSAMI,

Our program, to promote the health of women and children in the rural and very underdeveloped areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been progressing steadily. We have fourteen (14) candidates for the advanced nurse midwifery degree.
Each of them lives in the central - western part of the CONGO, and all are practicing nurses in this rural agriculture / rain forest province.

* We have purchased each of them textbooks (approx $80 per set of two textbooks).
* All of the candidates have computer access, and we have initiated the lesson plans.
To date, two lessons have been completed and they are working on the third didactic
lesson on maternal health care. The instructors are Agnes Kanyanya, PROSAMI Founder (Virginia, USA),
Eudoxie Kasekw (Kasai Orientale province of Congo), and Joyce Zwane (Durban, South Africa.)

Dr. Jean Mukendi, of the Congolese National Health Ministry, is our Medical Director in the
Congo.

PROSAMI has created a movie of childbirths in the rural Congo area; with key
stories being one of a mother who dies shortly after a stilllbirth, a woman who is diagnosed
as being pregnant and is permitted to continue her pregnancy for 11 months, at which
at which time emergency surgery demonstrates a 12 kg. cyst, and the birth of premie
quadruplets who are taken, one by one in arms of men and women, in a conventional
automobile to the nearest maternal / infant clinic to ensure their survival.

PROSAMI has been granted tax exempt status, so any donations may be considered
as such. Our Board of Directors is based in Virginia,with communication between

Le PROSAMI, Part I, movie was presented tonight at our PROSAMI Board Meeting in the United States. Highlights of this very moving documentary, set in the Kasai Orientale region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, include:
- A very malnourished woman, with little prenatal care, gives birth to FOUR babies at one time. She manages to make it to one of the larger clinics. The babies are premature but still alive. The babies are transported to a nearby clinic with more resources. Each nearby man or woman takes one of the babies in their arms, and they all get into one car and go into the larger village to find a better equipped clinic. No one is really attentive to the mother, she is expected to walk with the men / women carrying the babies.
- Even at the clinic, there is no incubator, the four babies are piled together in a large wooden box lined with blankets.

- The movie shows a mother dying and at the point of her death. She experienced persistent uterine bleeding. The only blood transfusion was another adult (there are no blood banks) and no adults came to her rescue. She had a stillbirth, and after evacuating the fetus, she continued to bleed. She came from a rural area 20 miles away.. no one knows how much of this she had to walk. She was moved to a larger clinic when her bleeding persisted and died shortly after arriving there.

- The movie shows an operating room where a woman, who had been diagnosed as being “pregnant, “ after 11 months and no baby, was finally evaluated for a non-viable uterine mass, and found to have a 12 kg. uterine cyst. It was removed surgically. Her prenatal care, which was minimal, failed to pick this up.

Skylight Studios is a wonderful new art gallery in Charlottesville, that has a great assortment of originial artwork. There are some beautiful paintings, sculpture, jewelry, and other fascinating handmade items. They have been a strong sponsor of PROSAMI as well.