Launch of Project in Lugansk oblast | |||
The joint multimillion project between the State and private companies with participation of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and TNK-BP in Ukraine, aimed at improvement of mother and infant health in Ukraine was launched in Lugansk city maternity. The following step is implementation of the project at the obstetric division of the Lugansk Regional Clinical Hospital.
On February 23, 2006 top managers of USAID Mission and TNK-BP in Ukraine had a meeting with the Governor of Lugansk Region. This meeting officially launched the Mother and Infant Health Project in Lugansk Region.
Three weeks before the official launch the experts of JSI Inc., which is responsible for project implementation conducted a thorough analysis of the needs in the region and studied possibilities for creation of conditions on improvement of mother and infant health in Lugansk Region. During the analysis a number of indexes was discovered which should be improved in quickest possible terms. The Governor as well delivered sad statistics. According to him, the level of maternal death in the region exceeds the average index in Ukraine by 1,5 times, child death — by 12%. The local authorities believe that the main reason is insufficient material and technical support of the medical institutions. Keeping this factor in head, JSI Inc. experts still suggested to improve the situation in the region systematically.
The Project Manager Helen Lefevr-Schaulle told in her presentation about project efficiency and the problems which should be solved. To demonstrate successful examples of implementation of new technologies and approaches Mrs. Lefevr-Schaulle told about maternities in Lutsk, Zhytomyr and Donetsk. In the course of cooperation within the framework of Mother and Infant Health Project it was succeeded to significantly reduce child death, eliminate hypothermia of the newly-born, reduce the number of abandoned children in these and in ten other medical establishments. At the same time Project Manager noted, that nowadays maternities in Lutsk and Zhytomyr were much better than in her country, in France. “The French Embassy will not forgive me these words”, — joked she.
Very often such words were used in the presentation as “this is just common sense”. Really, the bigger part of innovations is known to the doctors still in the first term of their education, for example temperature conditions in medical establishments, how to wash hands in a proper way and so on. But in order to create comfortable conditions for the mothers and the children the awareness of the medical personnel should be changed, which still perceives pregnancy as an illness and birth as a conveyor at a plant. It is good that the heads of the medical establishments are ready for transformations.
The project organizers made a decision to financially support the Lugansk City Maternity, as a future regional centre of the project. During her visit to the maternity Helen Lefevr-Schaulle passed a letter to the Chief Medical Officer, which contained information about purchase for the maternity of a new ultrasonic diagnostics equipment SLE-101PC and information processing system as well other necessary equipment.