Goal 3
Improve the health outcomes of mothers and newborns
Well trained midwives improve quality of care which results in better health outcomes for women and babies
Amsale and her baby Sitota have a happy memory of their birth-day. But it could have been a different story. Midwife Bekele delivered Sitota, who did not breathe. He remembers feeling confident, and knows the training he received helped him save Sitota’s life.
More mothers and babies survived
The project evaluation showed impressive decreases in the main causes of maternal mortality, eclampsia and postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) at the implementation sites. Although other factors could have positively influenced quality of care, the pattern of results in all three countries gave us confidence that the project was a major contributing factor.
Improvements in the 50,000 Happy Birthdays project implementation sites 2020, compared to the baseline in 2018
Ethiopia
Data source: Ethiopia Ministry of Health, Health Management Information System (HMIS).
PPH and eclampsia fatality are not routinely collected in the Ethiopia HMIS. However, the project team observed an significant improvement in the health provider’s management of PPH and eclampsia.
Rwanda
Data source: Project’s MEL tools by Novametrics.
Tanzania
Data source: Project’s MEL tools by Novametrics and HMIS data.
Better care for all women and babies
“The training has also influenced our work in other departments, especially antenatal care – we give better information to the women and explain to them how to recognise danger signs and how to prepare for labour. Similarly, in outpatients we often see sick newborns, and we can advise mothers about what care they need”.
Midwife trained in the project