Ethiopia is one of the countries with the highest maternal and child morbidity and mortality rate in the world. Several factors contributing to these poor health outcomes are poor antenatal care attendance, a shortage on healthcare workers but also gaps in knowledge among these healthcare providers. Many pregnant women in Ethiopia deliver their baby in the absence of a skilled birth attendant, which increases the maternal and child morbidity and mortality rate even more.
Health[e]Foundation trains healthcare workers in world’s most vulnerable societies to ensure quality treatment for everyone in need. In Ethiopia, we deliver the e-learning program Female&Family[e]Education to the midwives and offer information via m-health LUCY to pregnant women and mothers of newborns.
It is not the first time that we conduct workshops in Ethiopia. Thanks to the generous funding of Diorapthe we have already trained over 600 midwives and medical doctors from 2015 till 2017. Now that we received the second funding from Dioraphte, we can continue the Health[e]Families project and we will train another group of 600 midwives in Ethiopia with the aim to decrease the gaps in knowledge to improve healthcare delivery to (pregnant)women and newborns in the country.
In March we conducted a first round of new kick-off workshops. In July, we returned to Ethiopia to conduct two follow-up workshops; one workshop in the capital city of Addis Ababa and the other one in Gondar. Already 150 midwives received access to the e-learning so far!
During the 2-day follow-up workshop, the e-learning program and the mobile service LUCY was evaluated within small groups. The focus group evaluations showed satisfactorily results from participants towards the Female&Family[e]Education course. The course has already supported them during their daily practice as a midwife. Some small adjustments to the course will be made to optimize it for the Ethiopian context. Participants furthermore experienced LUCY as a great tool to promote healthy pregnancy and healthy babies. Registering women has been challenging in the beginning but over 900 women are using LUCY at the moment.
Participants enjoyed interesting presentations regarding respectful maternity care, pre-eclampsia, nutrition during pregnancy, women and HIV, PMTCT, communication and more. At the end of the second day, almost all participants received their certificate and will continue medical education online with free access to all our courses! In Gondar we achieved a completion rate of 100%!
At this very moment, Health[e]Foundation is conducting another follow-up workshop in Addis and a new kick-off workshop in Adama. Due to security reasons the kick-off in Arbaminch is postponed to a later date. For now we are looking forward to the new workshops in Addis and Adama.
