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Health Poverty Action: Mothers on the Margins

Health Poverty Action  advocates,among other things, for women throughout the world:

Indigenous women, or those from other cultural minorities, are more likely to die or face complications related to pregnancy. Health Poverty Action’s new Mothers on the Margins campaign is calling for action to change this – and working in partnership with indigenous communities themselves, innovative solutions can be found.

Specifically in Laos they:

We are improving maternal and child health through our project with indigenous communities in Attapeu. Regular Health Days reach remote communities to provide basic services such as immunisations, prenatal and postnatal care, and to identify and feed malnourished children.

I wonder if clean birth kits might fit well with this mission?

New Mother and Child Hospital Vientaine

A new mom and baby hospital opened in 2011 in Vientaine sees many patients and gives foreign medical personel a chance to get experience and teach Lao medical personel.  http://www.vientianetimes.org.la/sub-new/Lifestyle/lifestyle_The%20Mother.htm

I found this interesting:

“Those wards will allow us to lower the infant mortality rate significantly,” says [Dr Urs Lauper, a former head of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University Hospital Zurich]. That contributes to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

With the same goal in mind, the Swiss Lao Hospital Project funded a newborn delivery kit, which provides medical personnel in rural areas with hygienic materials to prevent omphalis (navel inflammation) and newborn tetanus. In the future Dr Lauper hopes to strengthen the health system at the village level and to improve the equipment used at Health Centres.

Here is another article on the subject: http://laovoices.com/childrens-hospital-opens-in-vientiane/

Direct Relief Provides Midwife Kits

Direct Relief finds that

Pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of death and disability among women of childbearing age in developing countries. Having a skilled attendant during delivery is considered the single most critical intervention for ensuring safe motherhood.

Therefore they have initiated programs to train midwives in 12 countries (Laos among them) and supple them with kits to ensure clean, safe birthing.

The traditional midwife kits are targeted to areas where more than 50 percent of deliveries happen at home and to providers who have completed basic birth-attendant training programs.

Certified midwife kits have the same materials as a traditional midwife kit, but also include equipment such as stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, and instruments appropriate for births at home or in a health or maternity center.

Laos: What will impact be of newly trained midwives?

According to this article, due to the culture of birthing at home and without a medical professional, the new midwives in Laos may not get much business.

IRIN Examines Efforts To Train Midwives, Improve Maternal Health In Laos

http://globalhealth.kff.org/Daily-Reports/2011/November/16/GH-111611-Midwives-Laos.aspx

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

“In 2010, for the first time in more than 20 years, 140 midwives graduated in Laos but specialists say their skills may go untapped because the country’s women are not used to visiting health workers,” IRIN reports. “Only 34 percent of women in Laos seek the advice of medical professionals; even fewer see one when they are pregnant, according to government data from 2009-2010,” the news service writes.

“The historical lack of attention paid to maternal health has contributed to Laos being the third-worst out of 161 countries with reliable health data for a child to fall ill, according to the most recent Health Workers Reach Index by Save the Children, which measures not only the number of health workers, but also their impact,” according to IRIN. In Laos’s “hard-to-access mountain villages, women are accustomed to delivering their babies alone,” and “women typically go to the health center … once they encounter severe complications or find their baby is dead,” IRIN writes. According to the news service, “Laos has 859 health centers and the government is aiming to place a midwife in every facility by 2015” (11/16).

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