Family issues

Pictured is a box of fifty one-month foil packs of "birth spacing pills" in the hospital pharmacy. We see very few women in the clinic and the men culturally won't buy these for them. They can be purchased in town.
No families live on base and even the local ones have no good way of traveling the 10 miles from the city to the base. Families of soldiers may receive care at the hospital: wife, children (even as adults), parents, parents-in-law and siblings. There are plans for base housing in a few years.
Their law allows a man to have up to 4 wives; I only met a few with 2, all the others have one. Each wife must get the same consideration, even to equal living space. Men with multiple wives sometimes even have separate but equal houses for each wife.
Fertility rates are quite high for many reasons. Over 1/3 of children die before age 5. There is no social security, so family support is paramount. Up to 20% of women die of childbirth complications. The hospital in town does 50-60 deliveries a day, and the moms are discharged 2 hours after delivery if no problems.
One soldier patient was with us for a few months, and we kept seeing new brothers who cared for him. We found out he had 10 brothers and 5 sisters of two mothers and one father. And they provided excellent, around-the-clock care for him.