Support 300 Safe Births in the Nepal Himalaya

In this report we would like to share some quantitative information regarding our Maternal and Child health activities in the fiscal year 018/19. 

Maternal Health 

Safe motherhood and maternal health is one of the prime focus areas of PHASE Nepal. Regular health check-up (both at health post and ORC), temporary and permanent family planning services, ante- and post-natal care (ANC and PNC), and safe delivery services are the major services that we provide to enhance maternal health in our project sites. We also provide special health education sessions for women and conduct meetings and trainings as relevant; for example, we conduct ANC orientation, CBIMNCI training, mothers group meeting, FCHVs meeting and other activities, such as, sanitation & hygiene program (village cleaning program, menstrual hygiene orientation and pad making training). This fiscal year 1232 deliveries were conducted in PHASE’s working area; of them, 37.33% deliveries were conducted by PHASE Nepal’s staff. Remaining deliveries were either home deliveries (28.57%) or were delivered in other health institutions (34.09%), such as, district and zonal hospitals (fig.9). Despite continuous efforts, prevalence of home delivery is quite high; the reasons for this could be: geographical difficulties, traditional beliefs and technical inefficiencies in health service delivery system/ mechanism. A total of 1752 pregnant women were assessed for 1st Ante natal check-up, among them 846 (48.84%) were tracked in 4th ANC service. Though the enrolment percentage for 4th ANC is high in this fiscal year (48.84%) compared to 27% in FY 2017/2018, huge gap between ANC 1st and ANC 4th still exists and ensuring linear ANC visit as per GoN protocol is important. 

Child  Health 

Neonatal care, children health check-up (at OPD), growth monitoring and nutrition status assessment and support for immunization are the major activities conducted by PHASE to enhance child health in its project sites. Besides clinical, community level efforts like counselling to mothers, Community Based Integrated Management of Neonates and Childhood Illness (CB-IMNCI) trainings to mothers and Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs), Child protection and school health education are also made to improve children’s health. As we work with/for “Ultra-poor” communities in remote districts, we deal with cases of severe malnutrition in children under five years of age. Thus PN is integrating its livelihoods projects to support food security and hunger management so that issues related to nutrition of the marginalized community is addressed. The major activities of PHASE’s integrated health programme include: nutrition workshop, super flour demonstration, child growth monitoring and healthy baby competition.

PN also supports government health facilities in immunizing children, and also organizes school health education in each school at project site.

Total 1040 newborns were examined by PN’s health staff this fiscal year, where 9 still births and 12 neonatal deaths were experienced. More children (N=22261) were monitored for growth compared to previous years; only 7.24% were underweight which is comparatively low - compared to previous years.

"PHASE's effort in strengthening the government health service is praiseworthy. We would like if we get supported for next 2 years until the local goverment can fully run the health service on its own. " - Ward Chairperson, Bhotang , Sindhupalchok