Arrived Home Safe and Sound

I have arrived back to my University in Madison, Wisconsin after a safe flight home.  Reflecting back on the trip, it is safe to say it was a challenging one but definitely productive.  I will continue to receive follow-up information from my midwife contact at the hospital of mothers and their infants as it becomes available.  And so far, there still has been no infant deaths!  This in itself is a huge success. 

The biggest benefit I see from this project is truly learning where a great need lies in the Iganga area regarding infant mortality rates.  As I mentioned before, it is within the village away from the hospital.  There are many different levels of health centers surrounding the district serving many mothers where the resources and education are severely limited.  This is my new focus as I feel confident the staff at the hospital has learned how to give the appropriate discharge health education. There is still an issue at the hospital of a large number of "runaway" mothers who fail to stay at the hospital until discharge--but I am also working on this issue.  I have met many contacts and organizations working diligently in the area addressing similar health focuses as me and I am so glad to learn of the efforts and the potential connections of the future.

Thank you for following my first blog! I have posted photos of the trip on facebook.  And if you have any questions regarding the project or are looking for connections in the area, don't hesitate to ask.  Until next time...

Inspiration

Some inspiration for the project!  At the hospital, I recognized a mother who participated in the project a few days prior.  She had her baby with her and was speaking to a student nurse.  I went to say hi to the mother and noticed she had the baby hat on her infant still (yippie!) and found out she had returned to get help because her baby was bleeding from her nose.  Bleeding from the nose is one of the dangers signs we stress to the mothers in the health education, and if that should happen they should immediately seek help. It is unfortunate that her infant was ill, but so great to witness a mother listening to the health education and acting upon it!  Now we can only hope she gets the appropriate treatment needed (which is a whole different battle in itself).

After much more traveling to the villages, I decided to check out a health center in one of the them to compare their postnatal care to the hospitals.  I went to a village health center 3 (which is two steps below a hospital).  What I found was both frustrating and humbling.  It became immediately apparent that my project and model being used at the hospital would have really benefited the health centers.  Currently they have up to 7 mothers per day that are discharged.  They get discharged with minimal education (most of their education is given at antenatal visits) and are told to come back on Thursday (no matter the day of their discharge) for group education.  At the group education they discuss cord care, breastfeeding, family planning, and maternal care.  They do not touch on danger signs of the infant/mother or Kangaroo Mother Care for low birth babies.  The midwives have never heard of KMC at all.  This poses a problem in that depending on when mothers give birth, they could go for almost a whole week not knowing how to properly breastfeed or clean the cord, etc, especially pertinent information for new mothers.  All of this contributes to the very high neonatal infant mortality rates.  Because I am at the end of my trip there is a limited amount I can do in regards of starting the health education here.  I explained to the head midwife what should be done, when and what education should be given to the mothers and I gave her a replicate of the educational materials and resources I am using at the hospital.  I also provided her with baby blankets--to be given to low birth weight babies as I do not have enough baby hats!  The Uganda Village Project will be checking up on the project for me in the next weeks.  If I should wish to continue with infant mortality research, the health centers provide the perfect outlet for great change.  They appear to be much more receptive to changes and aid in a humbling way.

For those of you interested in US infant mortality--check out this article that proves research and quality of health care is something that needs to be continuously worked towards.

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/31/u-s-ranks-low-for-newborn-survival/?hpt=hp_t2