Document of the day

The document of the day is from a dossier that has been consulted by a an interesting list of researchers, Denise Roth Allen, Walter Bruchhausen, Stacey Langwick or Matthew Bender amongst them. The dossier adresses the training of African women as midwives. The discussions in colonial health services testify to the idea, that intervening in birth practices shall serve as a 'modernizing' instrument . This is what an official wrote in 1950: "Such girls [25 year olds] may not in fact be of much value as midwives, but they will form a nucleaus and a base from which the old tribal conservatism may gradually vanish, giving way to a future service of young midwives."