By Jenny Holl | Administrative Manager
As we embark on a new year, we would like to take a moment to reflect on everything that we accomplished together in the last 12 months. 2013 was a great year and we are looking forward to even bigger things in 2014 as we begin working in another district.
In Dolpa:
As you may know from our last update, this year we were in the process of upgrading two birthing centers in the Dolpa district when we came up against weather challenges that significantly delayed our progress. In the last few months of the year, our field teams did their best to make up for lost time. We are happy to announce that construction and building upgrades at the Phoksundo Birthing Center have been completed and at the Saldang site, only the water tank remains. We have also begun working on a third health post, so that it too may be upgraded to a Certified Birthing Center. We have also formed a new partnership that should help ease future transport of materials and equipment. We are currently working together to have all necessary medical equipment and remaining birthing center furnishings taken up to the Dolpa birthing centers as soon as the weather improves a bit more - most likely in March or April. In the meantime, we have also been able to sponsor three nurses to become Skilled Birth Attendants (SBAs). The SBAs now have the skills needed to manage normal deliveries each of the three birthing centers we are upgrading. Tashi will be working at the Bhijer Birthing Center, Pema will be located in Saldang and Pasang will be the resident SBA at the Phoksundo Birthing center. Each nurse completed a Skilled Birth Attendant training so that she may act as a resource for the pregnant women in her community throughout pregnancy and delivery, facilitate deliveries, and have a thorough understanding of possible complications and how to act when warning signs present themselves.
Over the past year, close to 100 births took place in the 2 birthing centers which we upgraded in 2011 and many more were successfully attended by our Skilled Birth Attendants at other locations in the district. Last year, our SBA at the Dho Tarap Birthing Center also began offering regular utlrasound check-ups, which will greatly help us to reduce emergency complications by referring patients to larger hospitals sooner when complications arise. With three new Birthing Centers and Skilled Birth Attendants, we are hopeful that deliveries attended by SBAs at Birthing Centers will be even higher in 2014!
In addition, this year 35 traditional healers and 45 Foot Soldiers of Change (Female Community Health Volunteers) have been trained on a variety of skills including newborn care, birth preparedness, ultrasound use, emergency obstetrics, and the use of a mobile health system to improve care delivery and reporting in our program areas. As a result, in Dolpa, the maternal mortality ratio has reportedly dropped nearly 40% and the reported neonatal mortality rate is down 64% from the baseline numbers from when we began working in Dolpa just two years ago.
We are very excited about the progress we are seeing in Dolpa, despite the challenges we face in working in such a remote area. We have all of you to thank for our successes and we are looking forward to many more positive outcomes in 2014!
Thank you!
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