CleanBirth - Saving Mothers and Babies in Laos

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Clean Birth Kits Org: IMA World Health

Yeah! Another organization is providing moms with clean birth kits. Well done IMA World Health and their Safe Motherhood Kits.  The kits have more in them (see below) and cost $25.

Each Safe Motherhood Kit™ contains essential clean and sterile supplies including gloves, umbilical tie, scalpel, gauze pads, plastic sheeting, bar of soap, washcloth and baby supplies (a hat, tunic and blanket). IMA also provides education on safe birthing procedures and training on the proper use of a Safe Motherhood Kit™ to ensure the safest birth possible.

One $25 donation provides an entire Safe Motherhood Kit™ to an expectant mother, from the materials and packaging to shipping, delivery and training. Think of it—a $25 donation may be a matter of life and death for a mother and her baby.

CBK Organizations: Global Health Training

Global Health training does great work in Honduras, Uganda and India.  They bring medical supplies, including clean birth kits, and provide birth-related training.  I love the message on their front page http://globalhealthtraining.org/:

We have the opportunity to save lives and improve the quality of life for families in remote communities by taking basic birth supplies and education into their villages and communities. We can make a significant difference by teaching basic healthcare principles.

Midwife with Clean Birth Kits Headed to Haiti

Just as the name suggest, http://trainmidwivessavelives.org/, Carrie Blake’s site details her efforts to bring midwifery training — and clean birth kits — to women in the developing world.

Carrie is a homebirth midwife in North Idaho who wants to:

train the “unskilled birth attendants” (based on the World Health Organization’s definition of “skilled birth attendant”) in the most basic “skills” associated with the problems most prevalent in pregnancy and birth: postpartum hemorrage, pregnancy induced hypertension,  obstructed labor, and basic neonatal resuscitation. A pictorial, modular training that could be used by any “skilled birth attendant” to train and “unskilled birth attendant” will hopefully be the end result.

She is headed this month to Haiti stocked up with clean birth kits.  Well done!

Bloggers for Birth Kits

Yeah! I just found another mom/clean birth advocate.  She is raising awareness and funds for clean birth kits through http://themommyhoodmemos.com/.

Her initiative Bloggers for Birth Kits has raised funds to send more than 1200 clean birth kits to Papua New Guinea!  From the site:

Bloggers for Birth Kits is a simple initiative from the Mommyhood Memos to rally bloggers to reach out and help other moms in Papua New Guinea. These moms may live in a different nation to you, speak another language, look a little different, or have a very different lifestyle… but they are mothers with the same heart. Mothers who desire to deliver healthy, happy babies just as we do.

I am definitely getting in touch with her.  It seems we have alot in common:)

CBK Organizations: Pathfinder International & Hemorrhage

Pathfinder International’s mission is “to ensure that people everywhere have the right and opportunity to live a healthy sexual and reproductive life.”

They have a ton of great info on their site, including a Powerpoint by Dr. Shabnam Shanaz in Bangladesh here about the use of Misoprostol and the monitoring of blood loss.  It clearly shows the hows and whys of measuring blood loss.

Here is another presentation about Postpartum Hemorrhage.  I found this very interesting about the “4 Delays” involved in maternal death.  Read more for the Pathfinder Model for addressing these issues and lessons from the field:

The first is a delay on the part of a woman, her family, or a community birth attendant in recognizing that she is in crisis, often because of excessive bleeding.

…The second delay is slowness in deciding and taking steps to seek skilled obstetric care once a crisis is recognized.

…The third is a delay in reaching the facility, due to lack of money or transportation, distance, poor roads, or bad weather.

The fourth delay occurs at the facility, which may be poorly staffed and equipped and unable to treat the woman in a timely fashion. The family may not be able to pay for care or have cultural fears about donating needed blood. Blood shortages play a critical role in the fourth delay, as surgery may be postponed for many hours while a willing matched donor is sought.

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