Expand Maternal Healthcare in Haiti with C2C!

As mentioned in Care 2 Communities' previous report, there were delays in the execution plan of expanding the maternal health program due to some of our activities not being carried out because of political turbulence across the country from September to Mid-December 2022. Just recently, the situation has calmed down, and we were able to start implementing a program expansion.

We successfully recruited five new nurses who specialize in maternal and child care. We are currently in the process of training them. The midwife that has been with us for more than three years was promoted to supervisor of the recruits, participated in their practical training, and will oversee the management of the program. We reached an agreement with our current OB-GYN to ensure the training and evaluation of the five nurses and our midwife on their performance and interpretation of obstetric ultrasounds over a period of 6 months. Furthermore, we bought a new ultrasound machine and hired an additional OB-GYN. 

We plan to implement the program in two new clinics; H5-Sinek and H8-Roche-Plate, in the first quarter of 2023. All the logistical preparations have been made, and only the practical training of the newly recruited nurses remains to be completed. As part of the expansion, we are going from 1 to 3 days of antenatal consultation to meet the demand in our catchment area. Note that the OB-GYN will continue to provide ultrasounds to all pregnant women in the program at the same time as he trains nurses to perform and interpret obstetrical ultrasounds.

Lastly, we had the chance to evaluate the performance of the program in 2022. It must be emphasized that last year, we worked in a very difficult political and economic context, and we missed weeks of work due to the roadblocks and protests. However, we still managed to achieve a good performance overall. To have an idea of our progress, see the table below, summarizing C2C’s maternal health performance in 2022 versus 2021.

Performance Indicators                                                        2021     2022

Total # of pregnant women seen in the program:                    932        886

Total # of pregnant women having at least 4 prenatal visits:   383        390

Total # of pregnant women having received a postnatal visit:  17         390

Dear supporters,

First of all, we would like to thank you for your precious ongoing support. In order to keep you informed of the evolution of the activities of the Maternal health program throughout the year, we are delighted to share with you our achievements during the third quarter which has just been completed.

In fact, this quarter has been very difficult because our activities have been greatly impacted by the crisis that the country is experiencing at the moment, to such an extent that the program has been non-operational for several weeks.

However, we still had some accomplishments for this quarter. Indeed, we saw 207 uniquely pregnant women during antenatal visits, where these women received comprehensive pregnancy care and made safe delivery plans. We also saw 121 women during postnatal visits, where we checked their health status as well as the health of their child.

All plans have been made to implement the program in Sinek next November. But we still have to recruit and train a nurse, hire an OBGYN and buy an ultrasound device. All this is planned for this month of October.

It should be noted that the realization of this plan depends on the evolution of the political crisis of the Country, because it will be impossible if the protest movements continue across the country with blocking of the roads and impossibility for our staff to go to the clinics.

Again, thank you for your generosity. We hope to be able to share better news with you in our next update. 

• Global_giving_report._3rd_quater.docx (DOCX)

Dear GlobalGiving community,

Thank you for your continued support of C2C’s Maternal Health Program! As we are now almost halfway through 2022, we wanted to share some updates on the program from the year so far.

-In the first quarter of 2022 alone, we have seen 251 unique pregnant women at antenatal visits, where these women received comprehensive pregnancy care and developed safe birth plans. We also saw 84 women at postnatal visits, where we checked their health status and the health of their child as well.  

-We are currently working to expand the program to an additional clinic, Sinek, before the end of the year - thanks to the generosity of GlobalGiving supporters like you!

-We are in the process of partnering with a health center near our Bayeux clinic so that our patients can have easier access to HIV testing. 

We thank you again for your generosity and look forward to sharing more updates about the program’s expansion to Sinek soon!

Dear valuable supporters, 

Our C2C team were hoping to start 2022 without news headlines about COVID-19, but alas this is not the case, with Omicron impacting whole world. When it comes to our Maternal Health Program, many of the women enrolled in the program missed scheduled antenatal appointments due to them getting the flu or COVID-19. Since testing for COVID-19 in Haiti, especially in the rural areas we serve, is hard to come by, we have a hard time diagnosing the women in our program. For the ones that missed their appointments, the registration nurse and midwife call them up and check on their health status to see how their pregnancy is progressing considering their sickness.

In happier news, we are excited to report that in 2021 we had a total of 2,749 antenatal care visits: over 932 first visits, 648 second visits, 500 third visits, 383 fourth visits, and 286 5th+ visits. We’ve also given 1,114 Diphtheria vaccine shots as part of the program. In addition, our OB-GYN conducted 1,392 ultrasounds for the year. We are deeply grateful for the continued support of our amazing GlobalGiving community -- YOU made this all possible. 

This year, our main focus will be improving the program. We modified some of our procedures to be able to answer the high demand for enrollment. Previoulsly, our OB-GYN and midwife would both consult women coming for their initial visit. Since the first visit takes the longest with all the laboratory tests, ultrasound tests, and recording of medical history, we thought it would be best for the OB-GYN to handle all new patients and the midwife only consult patients coming for the second, third, and fourth visits; therefore, leaving the first and last visit to the OB-GYN and all at-risk pregnancies.

Furthermore, we are proud to report that our postnatal visits have been successful so far. In two recent vistits, we realized that even though the two mothers we visited had given birth at the hospital, they had not yet given their newborns the BCG vaccine, which is an important vaccine to protect against tuberculosis. After educating them on the importance of coming to our clinics with their babies to get the vaccine, they followed our recommendations and visited the following week. During the postnatal visit, we checked on the baby’s umbilical cord stump to ensure it was properly healing, and encouraged the mothers to breastfeed and not give food to their babies in the first 4-6 months.

The combination of our antenatal and postnatal visits have improved the knowledge of the women we serve in our communities. All this could not be achieved without the generous donations from the GlobalGiving community. Thank you and we look forward to sharing more about this program with you this year!

Over the last couple of months, C2C’s Maternal Health Program has grown in popularity even more--we now have a 1-2 month waiting list for two of the three clinics that offer these services!

Even though the program is already popular, we are always trying to improve its quality and efficiency. Thanks to the support of GlobalGiving donors, we are currently innovating new ways to increase patient throughput and reduce waiting times (especially in the laboratory). One of the first changes we made was to provide our laboratories with a second microscope. From the 25 women we enroll for the day, eight of them are new patients, and the rest are for follow-ups. The newly-admitted patients have ten laboratory tests, which take the most time. The second microscope will reduce the time the laboratory technicians take to deliver critical results. We are also looking at soliciting the expert advice of an OB-GYN specializing in global health to see how we can modify the maternal health protocol and see more patients.

Thanks to the generosity of our GlobalGiving community, since the beginning of 2021, we have had 2,048 antenatal care visits across three clinics! Of those, we have had more than 385 women come for at least four antenatal visits. In addition, we have administered more than 1,000 Diphtheria vaccine shots to maximize the maternal antibody response and passive antibody transfer in the newborn. We have also conducted more than 942 ultrasound tests. 

Furthermore, our community health team is working hard organizing postnatal visits to check on the health status of the new mothers and babies. The team is also encouraging mothers to come to the clinic and get their children vaccinated and do a follow-up consultation with our doctors.

All this cannot be done without the support and generosity of the general population. Still, the Maternal Health Program is a highly in-demand service at all our clinics (currently it is in three of our seven clinics). We are hoping to be able to expand it to the rest of our network of clinics in the near future.