River Cess County – River Cess County Health Team in collaboration with Last Mile Health, a local NGO, has ended a four day Home Base Life Saving skill (HBLSS) training for Trained Traditional Midwives (TTMs) in the county.
The Reproduction Health Supervisor of the County Health Team (CHT), Madam Farzee P. Johnson says the training is the first of four to be held for 200 TTMs in the six health districts.
River Cess County has six health districts with 19 health facilities across the county.
42 TTMs/TBAs were trained at the Gbloseo Clinic in Jo- River Health District to identify complications affecting pregnant women in order to initiate prompt referral. The TTMs were also thought different steps in caring for a pregnant woman.
The RH supervisor noted that the training is intended to discourage home delivery, adding that 80% to 90% of maternal deaths in the county occur during home delivery.
“Most Maternal Deaths occurred over the years resulted from home delivery,” Johnson told LocalVoicesLiberia reporter in River Cess County.
Ministry of Health’s disease Surveillance reports that for the Month of July, there was one maternal death in River Cess County. But Farzee Johnson says the CHT is striving to achieve zero deaths for the month of August.
According to the RH Supervisor is confident that the training will buttress the work of the TTMs in their quest to reduce maternal mortality in the county.
“This is one of the reasons we are conducting trainings for TTMs/TBAs because we don’t want to hear about any home delivery by any TTMs/TBAs,” she stressed.
Participants, drawn from different clinics catchments in the county, demonstrated role play on how to care for a pregnant woman before referral and the cue of condom.
Dr. Anna Laudau of Last Mile Health says her organization is working with the CHT to ensure maternal death and other health complications are reduced in the county.
“This is to buttress Government efforts in reducing maternal complications,” Dr. Laudau noted.
During the close of the training, TTMs/TBAs agreed to identify all pregnant women in their catchments and provide them first hand care.
Speaking on behalf of the TTM/TBAs, Lucy Nimely says they have learnt a lot of new things that will enable them work effectively.
“Our work will be easy for us now because we are not doing the delivery at home again, we take our big belly to the clinic for the big doctors to help us” Lucy said.
The training ran from Monday August 1 to Friday August 4, 2016.
Report By: Eric Opa Doue
