Brazils depleted jungle rivers make midwives even more essential when the water breaks [Video]

Deep in the Amazon jungle, a pregnant woman needs help.

Her baby is about to come, and a drought has parched the rivers that connect her community to the nearest hospital.

Enter Tabita dos Santos Moraes, one of the hundreds of traditional midwives who deliver babies in the remote villages of the world’s largest rainforest.

The hot afternoon sun shines through the timber-plank walls in the living room, where Mayleane Melo, 22, kneels to ease the pain of contractions. Ms. dos Santos Moraes kneels beside her.

“Relax,” says Ms. dos Santos Moraes, smiling. “We will give birth together, the two of us.”

At 51, Ms. dos Santos Moraes calls herself the “umbilical mother” of more than 180 babies she has brought into the world. Her great-grandmother taught midwifery to her aunts, who taught her mother, who taught her, starting at the age of 15.

Although Ms. dos Santos Moraes is …