“The medical equipment donated to our health centre is changing the lives of mothers and children,” gushes Sintayehu Ayele, a health officer from Garero, Ethiopia.
Sintayehu remembers a time when he didn’t have the equipment he needed and was forced to refer pregnant women and children — with limited means of transportation — to a hospital more than 80 km away. “Many community members were discouraged and very unhappy with our services,” admits Sintayehu. But, that’s all changed. “We [can now] provide them with a range of medical services.”
Thanks to funding from the Government of Canada, Christian Children’s Fund of Canada (CCFC), through the Canada-Africa Initiative to Address Maternal, Newborn and Child Mortality (CAIA-MNCM), has donated essential medical equipment and supplies to health centres and health posts to manage childhood illness in rural Ethiopia.
Medical equipment and supplies, for children under the age of five, as well as pregnant and delivering mothers, was purchased based on community needs. For example, the project provided delivery kits, stretchers and iron folate — given to improve the developing intellectual health and motor skills of the fetus.
The CAIA-MNCM team also held educational sessions with nearly 500 health workers. “That boosted our confidence [in handling] birth complications and in using medical equipment,” affirms Sintayehu, who was trained on topics such as basic emergency obstetric and neonatal care, integrated management of newborn and childhood illness, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, healthcare waste-management training as well as case management and infection-prevention.
The project is only just beginning and healthcare practitioners already have access to more equipment, supplies and training to provide better treatment to pregnant women, new mothers and children.
Check back for more success stories about CAIA-MNCM, which runs until 2020.