With its first year almost at an end we wanted to provide you with an update
on our December 10th Appeal, Birthing in the Pacific (BIP). This
project was set up in order to increase access to both skilled birth attendants
and functioning health care services in Papua New Guinea with the aim of
decreasing maternal morbidity and mortality, and increasing the knowledge base
and resources for midwives.
BIP was a project created by Soroptimist International South West Pacific
(SWP). It was a Federation Project before being selected as the 2011-12 December
10th Presidents Appeal Project. President Alice Wells visited the
BIP project earlier in the year and on witnessing the incredible positive
changes that SI is making announced that this will continue to be her
Presidents Appeal for 2012-13. The aim being to further build on the achievements
already made.
SI has been working with relevant partners to support the roll out of four
levels of educational programmes for birth attendants: providing work tools, producing
SI branded obstetric wheels for the BA’s, undertaking audits to help current
facilities meet with international standards and providing essential upgrades
to clinics where feasible and providing support to the PNG
Midwives society.
For the period January 2012 – September 2012 a number of donations from all 4 of our hard working Federations have been received totalling an amount of $261,157AUS. A fantastic achievement of which we hope to further build on in 2013.
Training & Resources
This year a partnership has been established between SI and the National Reproductive
Health Training Unit (RHTU) to establish Pacific Emergency Obstetric Care
(PEmOC). Project BIP has provided funding and educational resources to enable
facilitators and participants to have access to appropriate and current
teaching resources. BIP also started providing a ‘Karim Work Bilum’ (an
essential tool kit for skilled birth attendants) to all participants in their
programme. 120 bilum’s have been either purchased or donated and 100% of all participants on the programme so far have received their kit. 8 further work bilum’s have been distributed to 8 midwives attending an exchange program in Melbourne.
The partnership with the National Reproductive Health Training Unit is
enabling the team to have a far-reaching effect on their training courses in
Essential Obstetric Care and Emergency Care. Their 4 year programme, partly
funded by AusAID, is targeting front line staff of the 20 Provinces and other
hospitals and Health Clinics in PNG. SI’s
contribution to this huge task will be to assist in the provision of essential
training resources. After the completion of the course, these resources will be
left at the hospitals where training is taking place for their on-going
training needs.
One such training tool BIP provided was NeoNatalie, an inflatable simulator
designed to teach resuscitation skills in the first ten minutes of a baby’s
life. Considered an essential tool worldwide, BIP have contributed 60
NeoNatalie’s to the RHTU training program to add to the training mannequins
already sent. For further information on how NeoNatalie works please click here. 15,000 obstetric wheels have also been printed. An obstetric wheel is like a pregnancy calculator in the form of a disc, it provides a means
of quickly counting the weeks and days during pregnancy, the timing of
antenatal screening tests and assistance with determining foetal viability. The disc is invaluable
in helping professionals to reduce the risks to pregnant women and
their unborn babies.
Other items purchased include:
- 14 Advanced Childbirth Simulators
- 8 Birth International Pelvis’s
- 8 Pink Foetal Dolls
Another partnership one of the clubs, SI Ramu, has established, is with the PNG
Health Department’s Community Health Worker (CHW). CHW’s are people who work in Health Clinics but have had no
midwifery training despite the fact that they are delivering babies as a major
component of their working lives. This year 7
Community Health Workers have successfully completed a 6 month Maternal Health Competency Course conducted by a SI Ramu member who is also a midwife.. SI has contributed
resources and will continue to do so for further hospital based training courses. The 7 CHW’s graduated on the 19th
October. On graduation they were each handed clinical tools, texts, instruments
and delivery bundles. For the next course, we have committed to sponsor 2 of
the participants.
Another achievement this year is that 24 Village Birth Attendants (VBA’s) have completed Literacy and
Reproductive Health Education Programmes. The VBA’s came from the villages around Ramu and having completed the course, they now document
the births they attend and bring the data to the Health Centre once a
month. SI Ramu will continue to move out
to more remote villages for the next part of their project.
May Lamont, Assistant Project Manager for the BIP project, explained to us that The
National Elections, which are a very long process in PNG,
unfortunately held up a lot of activity goals in the BIP Project this year, especially in terms of reaching out to more remote areas.
However, despite this, great strides have still been made. SI LAE, have now
managed to conduct the first of their BIP mobilisation trips in the Huon
Province. Club members along with army engineers and porters walked for many
kilometres to reach remote villages in the Province. On arrival they talked to
the village elders and birth attendants and conducted workshops for the BA’s
and women, introducing them to the BIP project and collecting information.
Currently these villages have no realistic access to their nearest health
clinics so LAE will be providing up-skilling and literacy training along with
the basic equipment needed to assist them in their work. May has also recently met with the Provincial Health Department in the Madang province in order to schedule training programs. The first community mobilisation program has now taken place.
Looking ahead to 2013
In 2013 the following achievements are hoping to be made:
Supporting Birth Attendants
100 clinicians will have completed the PEmOC upskilling course.
14 Community Health Workers will have completed the Maternal Health Competency Course
50 Birth Attendants will have completed Literacy and Reproductive Health Education Courses
Supporting Birthing Centres
1 clinical facility will be set up and 1 facility set up to house the Statistical data/ICT Infrastructure needed.
Supporting Communities
The capacity of PNG Midwives Society to undertake relevant activites to increase to 50% .
50% of those midwives who have completed their courses to be actively registered so that PNG has a Professional Body of Registered Nurses.
SI will continue in its commitment to BIP and we will provide you with further detailed updates throughout 2013. By 2014 we hope to be able to say that we have largely contributed to a decrease in maternal and infant mortality because Papua New Guinea now has more skilled birth attendants with the tools needed to do their jobs. We hope that these achievements will then be demonstrated to other resource poor countries so that this type of work can continue.
If you would like to donate to this ongoing, fantastic project then please do so by sending all donations to your Federation Headquarters, for onward transmission to Birthing in the Pacific. Donations should be marked December 10th President’s Appeal 2012.
A big thank you to Project Manager Janet Askern and Assistant Project Manager May Lamont for their ongoing invaluable hard work and communication during this project.