International Medical Corps' emergency response to the 2011 drought in East Africa includes improving medical capacity. We are currently operating the maternity, pediatric, and emergency surgery wards at a hospital in South-Central Somalia. The maternity ward is experiencing severe patient overload and the existing staff members are stretched thin. With your support, we can hire additional midwives and security personnel, increasing the hospital's ability to provide safe deliveries for women.
Currently, the understaffed maternity ward handles 120 to 150 deliveries per month. Two additional midwives are critical to support this caseload, ensuring each mother gets the best care possible. The hospital also needs a female security guard so that female visitors are properly screened to ensure the safety of patients and staff. Security guards are necessary because this hospital is in a high-risk area of Somalia, but female staff arenat currently available in the evenings to assist guards.
Hiring two additional midwives would address the staffing need to ensure high-quality service delivery in the maternity ward. In addition, hiring one female security guard for the night shift would increase the comfort of the patients and security of the hospital as a whole.
Granting the means for a safe delivery is one of our key objectives, because giving birth with a trained midwife reduces the chances of maternal mortality by 70%. In this hospital, International Medical Corps provides on-the-job training, drugs, medical supplies and more. We also work to ensure the hospital is staffed well so they can give the best care possible. Not only will you provide jobs for two midwives, you will also give countless mothers and their children a safe, healthy birth.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).