WHY MIDWIVES?

May 3, ’12 5:26 PM
WHY MIDWIVES?
Emilia Cumbane, Mozambican midwife
trained in surgical obstetrics

A special entry for the International Day of the Midwife by Barbara Bale, Save the Children Health and Nutrition Team Leader.

The birth of a baby is a magical moment, transforming human nature into a miracle of life – a time of joy. Yet it is a tragedy that women and their babies continue to die in childbirth in the 21st century because of lack of access to midwives and other midwifery-skilled health workers.

A wealth of evidence indicates that a midwife or a health worker with midwifery competencies is crucial to reducing maternal and neonatal mortality and promoting the health of women and children. This is why the proportion of births attended by a skilled health provider is one of the two indicators for measuring progress toward MDG 5. Skilled attendance is also vital to protecting the health of newborns and achieving MDG 4: the majority of perinatal deaths occur during labour and delivery or within the first 48 hours after delivery. In Mozambique one third of children under 5 die during the neonatal period, the first month of life.

Continue Reading… Comments (0)

HOW THE “EXPIRED DRUGS CRISIS” IN MOZAMBIQUE WAS SOLVED

Apr 24, ’12 8:23 PM
HOW THE EXPIRED DRUGS CRISIS IN MOZAMBIQUE WAS SOLVED

That was 2011… ©Leen Jille

A post by Leen Jille, UNICEF Procurement Consultant

It was April 2011 when Mozambican newspapers revealed the “discovery” of a MOH warehouse full with expired medicines. Some other challenges in the area of Procurement and Supply Chain Management had already surfaced earlier in 2011 so the Minister proclaimed a “medicines crisis” and established a Taskforce. As Co-Chair of the MOH-donor working group on medicines, UNICEF was part of the Taskforce and played a key role in coordinating the efforts to address the various components of the crisis situation, one of them being the warehouse with expired medicines. Senior level management in the MOH and donors agreed that a complete inventory of the expired medicines was needed prior to the disposal of the medicines.

Continue Reading… Comments (0)

LOOKING BACK AT 2011: AN EVENTFUL AND DIFFICULT YEAR

Mar 28, ’12 7:10 AM

Trying to keep the balance...©UNICEF Mozambique

March is a busy month for Ministry of Health and Partners. After a year of implementation, March is the moment of the performance evaluation. A team of consultants looks at the key indicators for the sector and comes up with a detailed analysis of progress and challenges during the previous year. Then, at one large meeting attended by the entire Ministry and all Partners, the final conclusions on the performance of the sector and the recommendations for the year ahead are presented and discussed.

Behind the scenes, on both sides, public health experts are busy crunching numbers, reviewing trendlines, assessing indicators, trying to make sense of it all, and preparing carefully crafted speeches. It is a busy and exciting moment that allows everyone to take stock of where the Mozambican health sector is going. Here are some of my personal impressions, ahead of today’s meeting, when the positions of Ministry and Partners will be officially shared and communicated to the press.

Continue Reading… Comments (2)

THINKING BUSINESS: SALT, IODINE AND…MONEY!

Mar 16, ’12 10:00 PM

Sal iodado na comida é mais saude para a sua familia

By our new guest blogger, Kristine Dandanell Garn.

Have you ever heard of the importance of eating iodized salt to prevent iodine deficiency? If not, you are not alone!

Iodine deficiency is a silent plague. Only in extreme cases it will manifest itself in visible symptoms such as goitre, an enlargement of the thyroid gland. You do not feel an immediate effect on your wellbeing when you consume iodized salt. Still, globally, iodine deficiency is the single major cause of preventable mental retardation. Iodine deficiency in pregnant women causes miscarriages, stillbirths, and other complications and it prevents children from developing their full potential.

Hence, consumption of an adequate amount of iodine is essential for human development – both from the perspective of the individual and for the entire society. For this to happen, we may need to change our perspective when looking for possible solutions to this public health problem. Here is what we need to do.

Continue Reading… Comments (0)

ZAMBEZIA AND THE ONE UN PROJECT

Mar 15, ’12 11:28 PM

Alicia (WHO) and Luigi (UNICEF) enjoying a One UN moment during the health partners' workshop in Quelimane © E. Capobianco

A few weeks ago I went to Zambezia for a few days to participate in a health partners’ workshop followed by a planning meeting involving Provincial and District health authorities, NGOs and UN Agencies. The three days in Quelimane were full of discussions, discoveries and adventures. I will not dwell on the 12 hours delay of the LAM flight Quelimane-Maputo, that made me arrive home when the sun was rising and the kids were awakening to go to school(!). I will instead share a couple of thoughts that I had on Zambezia and the United Nations, while waiting for the plane…

Continue Reading… Comments (0)

FILHOS DA LUA: ALBINOS IN AFRICA

Feb 26, ’12 10:41 PM

A picture of a mother with her albino daughter on the outer wall of the Fortaleza in Maputo. © E. Capobianco

This weekend I have been to a wonderful photography exhibition at the Fortaleza in Maputo. The exhibition, called “Filhos da lua”, or “Sons of the moon”, presents stunning pictures of children and adults affected by albinism. It is a powerful reminder of the discrimination that many albino people unjustly suffer throughout Africa.

For me, this exhibition has been a great opportunity to enjoy some beautiful pictures, to learn more about the discrimination affecting albinos and to appreciate the efforts made by the local NGO ADOD (Associação Defendendo os Nossos Direitos) to explain albinism to the general public.

Continue Reading… Comments (2)

LOVE IS…BREASTFEEDING!

Feb 15, ’12 10:12 AM

Happy meal...for free! © UNICEF Mozambique

The last post focused on Mozambique’s renewed efforts to tackle undernutrition and particularly stunting. The country is committed to intervene in the first 1,000 days of life, from conception to two years, in order to reduce the stunting rate among children under 5 from 44% to 20% by 2020.

In the comments section, Barbara from Save the Children rightly pointed at breastfeeding as one of the most effective weapons to reduce undernutrition in children. Breastfeeding is indeed one of the simplest interventions to save children’s lives. Yet, many women and children in Mozambique seem to miss out on such a simple, powerful intervention.

Continue Reading… Comments (0)

KILLING THE FUTURE: THE DARKEST SIDE OF MALNUTRITION

Feb 7, ’12 7:26 AM

Preparing a meal ©UNICEF Mozambique

Last week, UNICEF Executive Director Tony Lake wrote a brief, yet powerful Op-Ed on the less known type of malnutrition called “stunting”. Stunting is the irreversible outcome of chronic nutritional deficiency during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, i.e. from conception up to their second birthday. Stunted children look like “normal” children, but they are shorter than children of the same age. They are five times more likely to die from diarrhoea; and their brain development is impaired: the neurons of a stunted child are in fact fewer and smaller. The physical and cognitive damage caused by not receiving enough of the right type of nutrients in the first 1,000 days of life is permanent. It cannot be treated. But it can be prevented in these first 1,000 days– and at relatively little cost. A cost that is far below the economic and social benefits of its prevention.

Continue Reading… Comments (3)

SEE IT, SMELL IT, FEEL IT: A FEW LESSONS FROM “THE FIELD”

Jan 31, ’12 8:21 PM

"Rociadores" in Marracuene, resting after spraying a house against mosquitoes ©E. Capobianco

In the past ten days I have been travelling a lot across Mozambique. I have been in Gaza Province to take a look at the APEs program and to quickly assess the impact of the cyclone Dondo. I have been to Marracuene, in Maputo Province, to check Indoor Residual Spraying against malaria and to see more training of APEs. I am now in Zambezia, to discuss with the Provincial Director and his Team how to plan for the implementation of a USD20 million CIDA-funded project that the United Nations will implement in the next 4 years.

These days looking at UNICEF work and interacting with people in the field have been priceless. They showed me the distance between paperwork and reality, between dry statistics and people with faces and feelings. I have seen a lot, I have listened as much as possible and I have tried to put myself in the shoes of the people I have met. Above all, I have learnt some lessons that cannot be easily learnt staying in an office behind a computer.

Continue Reading… Comments (4)

WILL MOZAMBIQUE LEAD THE COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS’ REVOLUTION?

Jan 26, ’12 11:00 AM

A CHW in Guija checks a baby for pneumonia by counting the number of breaths per minute ©E. Capobianco

Jeffrey Sachs recently wrote an interesting article titled “Breakthrough in Saving Lives in Rural Africa”. The article is about the new wave of community health workers (CHWs) that is rapidly moving across Africa, saving thousands of lives in many countries. CHWs come from rural communities, have local knowledge and can reach vulnerable individuals and marginalized groups providing life saving interventions. Sachs calls for a scale up of mass training and deployment of CHWs and makes the argument that the Global Fund and leading pharmaceutical companies should finance CHWs’ deployment across the continent.

On January 19, Luigi, two colleagues from Save the Children, and I travelled to Guija’, in Gaza Province, to review how the CHWs Program in Mozambique(called the APEs program) is functioning. We saw a training center where 20 new APEs were being formed and we spent time observing and talking to one APE operating in a remote village. The visit strengthened my conviction that Mozambican APEs are a major weapon to reduce child mortality due to malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia. It also made me think of what needs to be done to make this program truly successful in Mozambique. Here are my thoughts.  

Continue Reading… Comments (0)