CleanBirth - Saving Mothers and Babies in Laos

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Education is Key to Clean Birth Kits Success

CleanBirth.org doesn’t only provide birthing supplies, we educate families about safe birth. We are planting the seeds today that will ensure safer birth for girls tomorrow…or hopefully in 10 years in the case of the girls pictured here.

Since girls have babies so young, it is important to get them involved and learning about birth from a young age.  We hope that by training a volunteer in each village to talk about safe pregnancy and birth, as well as distribute Clean Birth Kits, girls will begin to gain knowledge that will help them when it’s their turn.

Knowledge

International Youth Day

mom12Happy International Youth Day!

WHO says that pregnancy and birth are a leading killer of girls 15-19 worldwide.

This girl in a village in southern Laos is a mother of two already.

Her lifetime risk of dying due to pregnancy and childbirth is 1 in 74.  In the US it is 1 in 2,400.  In Italy it is 1 in 20,300.  (Yes, the US is in bad shape too en par with Urkaine and Iran — just not as bad as Laos).

She is just a girl.  Help her by funding training for a woman, called a CleanBirth Volunteer, in her village who will educate girls and women about safe birth.  http://cleanbirth.org/donate/

 

Key facts [from WHO]

 

  • About 16 million adolescent girls give birth every year – most in low- and middle-income countries.

  • An estimated three million girls aged 15-19 undergo unsafe abortions every year.

  • In low- and middle-income countries, complications from pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death among girls aged 15-19 years.

  • Stillbirths and newborn deaths are 50% higher among infants of adolescent mothers than among infants of women aged 20-29 years.

  • Infants of adolescent mothers are more likely to have low birth weight.

 

 

Mobile Tech for Health Workers

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Dr. Nong with the nurses we trained in June. Next step mobile tech?

One of the first conversations that I had with my partner Dr. Nong and OVA in Salavan, Laos was about mobile technologies.  We excitedly talked about getting mobile phones into the hands of people in remote villages.  They would be able to contact nurses and get advice during pregnancy.  But then we hit the stumbling block: who exactly would get the phones?Now that we are moving forward with training CleanBirth Volunteers we should revisit this topic.

I was nudged into rethinking how mobile technology would dovetail nicely with the new step of having a trained volunteer in every village by an interview with Steve Davis the President and CEO of PATH: “DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION IN THE POOREST AND MOST REMOTE PLACES IN THE WORLD” (It is part of this series).

Here’s a quote from Steve Davis:

One of the most promising mobile interventions I’m seeing right now is our mobile midwife platform. It gives midwives in rural areas a mobile device that provides on-the-spot guidance for making clinical decisions, collecting data, and educating patients so that these midwives can provide even better care for mothers and babies. It’s breaking down boundaries to care and helping more families get access to high-quality health services, even when they live a day’s walk from a clinic.

My thought is that trained CleanBirth volunteers could phone the nurses with data about distribution of kits, report on the health of mothers, and get potentially life-saving information to share with mothers.

The next step is to learn whether this is feasible and whether distant villages in southern Laos have cellular service.

 

Tetanus Kills, Can be Prevented for $5

We provide birthing supplies.CleanBirth.org’s mission is to make birth safer by providing education and supplies.  Even still it’s easy to forget sometimes how effective and simple something like a cord clamp or tie can be in preventing needless deaths.

I just got a reminder reading this article in www.globalpost.com.  Here’s an excerpt of the story from a birth in India that went well, followed by unhygienic practices that cost a baby his life:

Chunnu Bai was lucky; it was a normal delivery. She picked up the baby and cleaned him with her sari, placing him on the rice tray in her house.

About half an hour later the village dai, a traditional (untrained) birth attendant, came to her aid. She cut the umbilical cord with a clean blade, and tied it with a thread from the house. Then she applied some oil to the stump of the cord.

The first couple of days, the child was fine and feeding well. On the third day, Chunnu Bai noticed that he stopped sucking, and his body went into a spasm. Horrified, she called for help and took him to the hospital. But the baby had developed tetanus, which in most cases ends up being fatal. The second day at the hospital, despite intensive treatment, they could not save the child…

Globally, of the three million newborns that die every year within a month of birth, more than a million babies die on the first day. The majority of these deaths result from complications related to preterm birth or arising during delivery — especially from unsafe home births.

Help CleanBirth.org prevent tetanus in infants in southern Laos.  Donate today.  $5 Saves 2 Lives.

Visit to Tahoy Villages, Salavan Province, Laos

mother3kidsWe had a successful visit to 5 clinics and a number of villages in Tahoy District, Salavan Province — the furthest about 40 miles from the Lao-Vietnam border.

The people were very curious about what we were doing there.  They enjoyed seeing pictures from our last trip.

The nurses from our November training were glad we were back with more kits — and they told us the the women were pleased with the kits.  They themselves felt good that the births were cleaner.

Here are shots from the day:

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