Tanzania: Saving tiny lives
Many Tanzanian hospitals have inadequate resources, staff and training to provide the care needed for pregnant women and new mothers. With often up to five babies in a cot, struggling to keep warm, they have no reserves to fight infection and thrive. As a result many are lost. Often the mothers are lost also due to a lack of care afforded to them.
Global Development Group Project J788N ‘Kangaroo Mother Care Development’ is designed to train health care workers and expectant mothers, providing a working model of newborn baby care that will contribute to neo-natal care in Tanzania. Kangaroo Mother Care now has eight nurses, all paid by the government. So far, from the Muhimbili hospital Kangaroo Mother Care Ward, 155 babies who were on the program have reached their target weights and graduated, while 113 remain on the follow up program. The program has reached its target of training 10 healthcare workers weekly, with a total of 305, for the year so far, while 20 pregnant women have been educated every week in the antenatal classes, with a total of 595 for the year to date.