News and Events

Further Support for the Skilled Birth Attendance Programme

SSMP has contracted a US based company, IntraHealth, to provide additional inputs to the skilled birth attendance (SBA) programme in Nepal from May 2008 to May 2009. As an essential part of the Nepal Government’s efforts to address maternal and newborn health issues, the SBA programme involves an enormous amount of work and coordination among different partners. The IntraHealth team of Martha Carlough and Cathy Murphy (IntraHealth Headquarters in USA) and Robert McPherson (Kathmandu based consultant) are providing technical inputs to:
 
·            Improve the quality of SBA training
·            Strengthen the SBA training system, including training materials, references and training site self-assessment tools
·            Design and establish a pilot SBA training site to field test new approaches and recommendations
 
The IntraHealth team visited Nepal for two weeks from 19th May to meet key people involved in the SBA work, gather data for further work and familiarise themselves with the situation and training materials. They met trainers, government officials and non-government partners, visited two SBA training sites, Baglung Hospital and Maternity Hospital in Kathmandu, and took part in a trainers’ workshop to discuss critical training issues. At the end of their trip they made recommendations for:
 
·            Standardising in-service training for medical officers and staff nurses
·            Improving the user-friendliness of the Learning Resource Package that forms the base of all SBA training
·            Development of a user’s guide and orientation for the quality improvement tool

04/06/2008 Ashima Shrestha SSMP