Midwife Amna Rizk: 54 years of midwifery in the city of Salamiyah, east of Hama, Syria.
Thirty kilometers east of the city of Hama in central Syria, resides the midwife Amna Rizk, 76, in Salamiyah city. A 54-year career journey full of stories that “Oum Khattar” tells while enjoying the look of wonder on the faces of her listeners.
She was 20 years old when she learned that her friends were enrolling in a midwifery course in Damascus so she joined them and started in 1969 a career full of hard work and surprises: "I remember giving birth to a Bedouin woman on a freight truck with the help of a street light!! This woman was visiting a doctor who diagnosed her labor pain as having renal colic. When she left the clinic and the cargo truck drove off for only fifty meters, her pains and screams increased, and I was called to examine her. She was about to give birth and she did not even know she was pregnant. There was no way but to deliver her where she was, on top of the truck, and she gave birth to a baby boy who is now a 35-year-old man.”
Um Khattar is currently retired as a midwife but is a member of the UNFPA-supported network of midwives in Salamiyah, where she is invited to attend meetings and share her vast experience. She believes that the outcome of her lifelong work is the love of the residents of Salamiyah city, where everyone knows her and calls her by "Sitti"- grandmama, because she gave birth to their mothers: "All of them are my sons and daughters, and I am very happy to see them in good health. I thank God that throughout my career I never lost not one mother nor one baby during childbirth."
