Malawi’s maternal death rate is among the highest in the world. The average woman in Malawi has more than six children.
With funding from The Health Foundation, a London-based charitable group, IHI and several British health organizations have formed The Health Foundation Consortium (THFC) program. The group’s goal is to reduce maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in three Malawian districts by 30 percent in three years.
IHI staff member Karen Zeribi, MHS, is based in Malawi, working with nine hospitals to improve maternal and neonatal care by using quality improvement methods. Activities will soon expand to health centers and communities. She will also train a Malawian professional to replace her when her 18-month stint there ends in November 2007.
Zeribi says teams from each facility meet regularly in Learning Sessions with Consortium and THFC faculty, and take new ideas back to their sites to test. Zeribi reports early successes in improving fetal heart rate monitoring (from 49 percent to 81 percent in one hospital), creating an isolation sepsis area for post-partum women and newborns, and empowering nurse midwives to initiate protocols for eclampsia while waiting for a clinician to arrive.
02/05/2007
