Reducing child mortality and improving maternal health are both millennium development goals and are receiving an increasing amount of attention. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded $5 million to a nonprofit in Massachusetts that focuses on improving both goals by increasing the number of new mothers in Ghana to deliver in hospitals. Ghana suffers from high rates of infant mortality that can be substantially decreased by having women deliver with trained personnel and having newborns seen by a doctor within 2 days of birth. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the nonprofit that received the grant, supports and facilitates meetings between expert committees and village chiefs to promote this idea and find ways to overcome the obstacles that prevent women from delivering in clinics or hospitals. Some of these obstacles are physical, such as poor roads, while others are more complex. For instance, in many Ghanaian communities there are prejudices against women or newborns leaving the house. Educating communities has helped turn many into advocates for clinic delivery and developed creative solutions to overcoming burdens. Dr. Barker, Vice President of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, set up a meeting in one village to find a way of getting women to hospitals when they did not have enough money. He predicted that the villagers would pool their money together to fund the initiative. “Instead, local minibus-taxi drivers proposed a deal: They would carry the women at no charge if, once they arrived, they were allowed to jump the line for paying passengers headed back home.”
Check out the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/health/gates-foundation-backs-hospital-transportation-for-expectant-mothers.html?ref=health
In the Children's Ward at Lawra District Hospital