Mother and Infant Health Project | |||
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At present the state of reproductive health in Ukraine gives special concerns. In a European country, having strong scientific and cultural potential, the infant mortality rate is twice higher than in the USA or the Great Britain, while the maternal one is three times higher. According to the assessments of international experts, this fact is connected not so much with the bad state of the maternal health, as with insufficient training of medical personnel, in particular, and the drawbacks of the whole health protection system in Ukraine, in general.
The Mother and Infant Health Project calls upon to change the current situation and is aimed at the introduction of efficient, internationally acknowledged perinatal methods of treatment at medical institutions and modern educational programs for health protection specialists.
In Ukraine this Project has been implemented by John Snow Inc. company (JSI, the headquarters are located in Boston) under the support of the Mission of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2002. In December 2005 the Project was joined by TNK-BP in Ukraine.
In the Ministry of health protection of Ukraine the Memorandum on mutual understanding and cooperation was signed between TNK-BP and USAID on December the 2nd, 2005. The partnership on this project has been intended for 4 years, within which there are plans to use approximately $7 million dollars (the total amount of financing from the side of the Company is intended at the level of $1,2 million dollars). The Minister of health protection of Ukraine, being present at the signature ceremony, has promised to promote the development of the Project from the Ministry side and has spoken rather favorably of its innovative character.
The cooperation of TNK-BP, as a Ukrainian business representative, with USAID within the framework of this Project has been the first experience like that for both partners.
At present the Mother and Infant Health Project, at the national level, has developed its work already in 14 regions of Ukraine, involving 43 maternity hospitals and 61 maternity welfare centers. Until 2010 it should cover the majority of the country's oblasts'.
The Project should develop the medical care standards, recommendations and clinical protocols in the sphere of health protection of mothers and children. Besides that, the Project sets an objective to carry out the revision of educational programs on the issues of health protection of mothers and children at the institutions of higher and postgraduate medical education, to intensify the use of case-based medicine methods by family doctors, who should become the first source of the timely diagnostication and referral to specialists of the pregnant women, infected with HIV with the aim to prevent the virus transfer from the mother to her child.
Participation of TNK-BP in Ukraine at the Mother and Infant Health Project has ensured its expansion and intensified realization in Lugansk oblast'. This is a priority region for the Company, since more than three thousand employees work at the Lisichanskiy oil refinery, located here. And, naturally, the Company strives to support the regions, where its principal activities are conducted.
With this aim, based on the proposal of the Company, a charitable organization “JSI Ukraine” has been established, with which the corresponding agreement was signed and the plan for implementation of the Project was approved in December 2006. Lugansk city maternity hospital has been the first object in Lugansk oblast', which started to master and implement modern advanced technologies of obstetrics and pediatric care.
The principal results, which the Project has succeeded to achieve in Lugansk oblast' (in particular, in the Lugansk city maternity hospital), are as follows:
- An educational room to conduct trainings has been arranged and supplied with furniture and equipment (for the total amount of approximately 25 thousand hryvnya) with the aim to ensure the qualified training of medical personnel at the maternity hospital. Starting from the date when the Project was launched in the oblast', more than 360 medical specialists of Lugansk and Lisichansk have been trained, for whom more than 10 trainings have been conducted, aimed at the considerable reduction (and ideally — elimination) of the negative statistics in the sphere of obstetrics, which had existed at the moment of the Project's launch in the oblast';
- 11 individual maternity rooms, emotionally acceptable and safe for mothers and infants, have been arranged (in 2005 there was only one room like this);
- The temperature at the maternity rooms is constantly maintained at a level, not lower than 25ºÑ. As a consequence, at present the hypothermia rate for the newborn infants (a temperature lower than 36,5ºÑ) is equal to zero (in 2005 it was equal to 17%);
- Our Company has arranged the provision of clothes sets to each newborn infant at the Lugansk city maternity hospital with the aim to prevent hypothermia;
- The general postnatal anesthesia rate has been decreased from 14% up to 11,6%; and
- An acquisition of 3 photodynamic therapy lamps, intended for physiologic jaundice treatment, has been arranged for the Lugansk city maternity hospital for the amount of more than 50 thousand hryvnya. Certain medical equipment for the amount of more than 75 thousand hryvnya has been given to Lugansk maternity hospital and the maternity department of the Lisichansk city hospital at the end of 2007.
Project partners continue effective cooperation with the Lugansk oblast' health protection department (in particular, within the framework of the campaign “Child's safe sleep”).
Results of work of the Mother and Infant Health Project over Ukraine in general:
- reduction in the rates of mortality for mothers and newborn infants;
- decrease in the quantity of cases, when mothers left their children at the maternity hospital;
- 3—4 time increase in the quantity of normal deliveries, and 1,5 time reduction in the use of the cesarean section;
- establishment of the efficient system for monitoring and assessment of implementation of effective practices, both in the obstetrics and in the pediatric care field; and
- development of special information materials to inform the maximum possible quantities of people — posters, brochures, and leaflets with necessary information are distributed at maternity hospitals, maternity welfare centers, children's pediatric polyclinics.
Official web-site of the Project: www.mihp.com.ua
Officials web-sites of the participants: www.jsi.com , www.usaid.kiev.ua