Nigeria

International Maternal Newborn Health Conference

ihadmin2 — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 15:10:48 +0000

International Maternal Newborn Health Conference ihadmin2 April 17, 2023

May 08, 2023 - May 11, 2023

The International Maternal Newborn Health Conference marks a pivotal moment as we get closer to 2030, the end date of globally agreed upon goals for maternal and newborn health and prevention of stillbirths. IMNHC will convene the maternal newborn health community to drive urgent action for the health of mothers and newborns by collaborating and fostering strong connections, exchanging the most effective tools, sharing best practices and evidence, and investing in proven interventions.

Aligning TOGETHER. Accelerating TOGETHER. Saving lives TOGETHER.

AlignMNH Secretariat

International Maternal Newborn Health Conference | #IMNCH2023

Our Participation

Panel Discussions

New research and program learning from Rwanda

Date(s):	May 09, 2023 11:00am - 12:15pm SAST (05:00am - 06:15am EDT)
More Information:	Two IntraHealth experts will participate in this panel discussion. Kathryn Mimno will deliver a presentation, "Factors associated with labor companionship in Rwanda." Assumpta Kayinamura Mwali will deliver two presentations, "Factors influencing delivery of the recommended service package for first antenatal care visit in Rwanda—a mixed method study" and "Reducing missed opportunities for first ANC visits through linkage of general OPD to ANC services in rural Rwanda."
Location:	Daisy Room
Presenter(s):	Kathryn Mimno and Assumpta Kayinamura Mwali

Every woman everywhere has a right to quality care: Addressing quality gaps in humanitarian settings

Date(s):	May 11, 2023 01:55pm - 02:55pm SAST (07:55am - 08:55am EDT)
More Information:	Onikepe Owolabi will be a panelist during this session and will deliver a presentation, "Improving referral outcomes in eastern Uganda through a social media digital platform."
Location:	Room 1.41-1.42
Presenter(s):	Onikepe Owolabi

Comment améliorer l’accès et l’adhésion aux soins pour une expérience positive de la grossesse (en français)

Date(s):	May 11, 2023 01:55pm - 02:55pm SAST (07:55am - 08:55am EDT)
More Information:	Marguerite Ndour will be a panelist during this session and will deliver a presentation, "Intégrer les soins maternels, néonatals, infantiles, nutrition et planification familiale en Afrique francophone occidentale augmente la résilience à COVID-19 et la couverture universelle en saisissant les opportunités d'offre de services."
Location:	Auditorium 2
Presenter(s):	Marguerite Ndour

Expanding maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response (MPDSR) as a holistic quality improvement (QI) approach to accelerate saving maternal and newborn lives

Date(s):	May 11, 2023 03:15pm - 04:00pm SAST (09:15am - 10:00am EDT)
More Information:	Kathryn Mimno will be a moderator and Assumpta Kayinamura Mwali will be a panelist during this MOMENTUM Safe Surgery in Family Planning and Obstetrics thematic session.
Location:	Daisy Room
Presenter(s):	Kathryn Mimno and Assumpta Kayinamura Mwali

Poster Presentation

To what extent are maternal and child health, family planning, and nutrition services integrated in the national-level policies in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, and Niger?

Date(s):	May 10, 2023 01:05pm - 02:05pm SAST (07:05am - 08:05am EDT)
Presenter(s):	Isabelle Bicaba

Participants

Robert Bambara

Monitoring, evaluation, and learning officer, INSPiRE

Isabelle Bicaba

Family planning/maternal and newborn health specialist, INSPiRE

Kathryn Mimno

Senior technical advisor

Assumpta Kayinamura Mwali

Deputy chief of party/Technical director, Ingobyi Activity, Rwanda

Marguerite Ndour

Project director, INSPiRE

Onikepe Owolabi

Senior global technical director for family planning and maternal, newborn, and child health

Fatoumata Tounkara

Monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning officer, Mali

Burkina Faso Côte d’Ivoire Nigeria Rwanda Uganda Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health Digital Health

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Cape Town, South Africa

I'm a Health Worker—Here's Why Advocacy Is Important to Me

kseaton — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 17:07:20 +0000

I'm a Health Worker—Here's Why Advocacy Is Important to Me kseaton June 17, 2022

June 17, 2022

Curiosity and passion drove me to become a physician. Then I realized I needed to learn how to be an advocate too.

I knew I wanted a career in medicine as early as elementary school. My passion was born out of curiosity. My younger brother had recurrent difficulty breathing and needed emergency hospital care often. I wanted to know why these attacks kept occurring. But I also wanted to know why we had to wait long hours to get emergency care and why the hospital had no electricity or was out of medications or essential health care products.

Growing up in such a dysfunctional health care system fueled my passion.

I wanted to help others so they wouldn’t have to go through the same ordeal my family did. I thought being a physician would give me a golden shot at doing this. It was therefore a no-brainer to return to my country, Nigeria, after completing my medical degree in Russia in 2018. I started working in primary care and volunteer medical outreach. I focused as best I could on patient care, despite the many daily hurdles I faced.

Being a health worker can be very challenging.

The job of a health worker can be rewarding. Nothing brings me so much joy and fulfillment as seeing clients who come in sick and frail leave the hospital healthy. However, being a health worker can also be very challenging. It’s particularly more challenging in lower-income countries where we must grapple with the lack of equipment, heavy workload due to staff shortages, the absence of professional development opportunities (especially for women), and poor infrastructure, all while still trying to give clients the best care.

The challenges for health workers in Nigeria are enormous. Basic health supplies we need to provide clients care are sometimes difficult to come by. For example, surgical gloves are not readily provided and clients have to buy gloves for health workers—if they don’t provide gloves, we cannot provide them with needed care. Sometimes water and electricity are absent in the hospital and we use our phone flashlights to work at night. The wellness and safety of health workers are not a priority. Working long shifts without breaks is considered the norm. One of my most draining days was when I worked for 48 hours straight without rest. This isn’t uncommon. Some health workers work every day, all year round without days off. It’s an exhausting experience.

Mary Peter is a physician from Nigeria currently pursuing her master's degree in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Health. Photo provided for IntraHealth International by Mary Peter.

COVID-19 has exacerbated these challenges and laid bare the wide gap between the value health workers bring to society and the extremely low wages we receive in return. For instance, my salary as a physician in Nigeria was 176,000 naira (about US$400) per month including a 5,000-naira (about $12) hazard pay. This gross underpayment contributes to the migration of health workers from Nigeria to higher-income countries, further worsening the shortage of health workers in the country while increasing the workload for those left behind. A 2021 Guardian article reports that 9 in 10 Nigerian physicians are seeking opportunities abroad. If nothing is done to curtail the mass migration of health workers, there will be a shortage of over 50,120 doctors and 137,859 nurses in Nigeria by 2030.

Working in these conditions is not only detrimental to our health but also to the clients we help.

Like most other health workers, my worst days as a practicing physician have been during COVID-19. At the start of the pandemic, I went through a range of emotions, from fear and frustration to anger over the lack of access to face masks, gloves, gowns, test kits, and other medical essentials. Despite being constantly exposed to COVID-19-positive clients, I never once got tested for the virus because we did not have test kits in our facility. Working in these conditions is not only detrimental to our health but also to the clients we help.

Violence toward health workers is also a recurring theme in health care settings in Nigeria. I experienced this firsthand. In June 2021, armed men stormed the hospital and physically attacked us, destroying hospital equipment and facilities as well. We had to run for our safety. The hospital was closed for almost five months after the attacks.

It’s not just Nigeria experiencing such health workforce challenges and their impact on health services. A new report from the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition shows there were more than 1,300 attacks against health care in at least 49 countries last year. A new study published in The Lancet shows there’s a shortage of 40 million health workers around the world, with the most severe shortages in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Health workers worldwide face similar challenges to varying degrees and need to navigate these hurdles to deliver high-quality care.

I want to learn more about how policies can be used to drive change.

That’s why I’m now pursuing my master’s degree in public health (MPH) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. I want to learn more about how policies can be used to drive change and improve indices and outcomes for underserved and marginalized populations.

And I want to advocate for policies and investments that will provide more support and protection for health workers around the world.

As an IntraHealth-UNC Summer Fellow, I’m researching and documenting key US government and multilateral health workforce policies and commitments to help inform policy recommendations to increase US and global investment and improve policies to support the global health workforce. I’m also conducting outreach and research to identify a list of potential grassroots supporters in the US, including health workers like me, who are committed to strengthening the global health workforce. And I’m learning so much more about the importance of advocacy for health workers and health systems through IntraHealth’s secretariat role for the Frontline Health Workers Coalition (FHWC).

I am encouraged by recent movements, including the US Global Health Workforce Initiative launched last month, as well as health workforce commitments made at the World Health Assembly—but we need to mobilize more advocates to ensure these initiatives and commitments are acted on.

As a health worker from a low-income country who has experienced first-hand challenges, I hope my contribution will greatly affect this cause and help policymakers see reasons to act for health workers.

By Mary Peter

2022 IntraHealth-UNC Summer Fellow

Policy & Advocacy Health Workers Physicians Nigeria

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How Can Health Leaders Improve Respect and Recognition for Midwives?

kseaton — Wed, 04 May 2022 21:33:03 +0000

How Can Health Leaders Improve Respect and Recognition for Midwives? kseaton May 04, 2022

May 04, 2022

Olajumoke Adebayo has some ideas.

Imagine if midwives’ voices were heard, they were fairly compensated, had safe working conditions, and could perform their full scope of practice.

A 2021 comprehensive review found that skilled birth attendants and midwives in low- and middle-income countries face low salary and inconsistent payments; poor supervision; lack of supplies, equipment, electricity, and water; and lack of safety; leading to low morale, poor retention of trained staff, acute staff shortages, and a heavy workload for remaining staff.

Lack of respect and recognition for frontline health workers lies at the heart of many workforce-related challenges that impede progress toward eliminating preventable maternal and child deaths, reaching universal health coverage, and even ending the COVID-19 pandemic. So we sat down with 26 experts, including frontline health workers like Olajumoke Adebayo to identify effective strategies and recommendations to change that.

Ola is a nurse-midwife and advocate in Nigeria, and one of the International Confederation of Midwives’ Young Midwife Leaders. She shares key challenges she and other midwives face and what she thinks will help.

Read: Strengthening Respect and Recognition for Health Workers: Strategies and Recommendations, our new report for more promising approaches to increasing respect and recognition for health workers.

Q: What challenges do national policymakers need to address to increase respect and recognition for nurses and midwives?

To be honest, not a lot of respect is given to nurses and midwives. You get to work, you get insulted after working really, really hard. You get insults from employers, patients, everybody. At the end of the day, the self esteem of the nurses and midwives are usually pretty weak. A young nurse or midwife comes in very enthusiastic about helping people and changing the world, but two or three years down the line they’re already tired of the job because there is no fulfillment and nobody listens to you.

Q: What interventions do you think would be effective?

I identify more as a midwife. In Nigeria, I see a lot of policies that midwives have to implement, but midwives were not involved in making them. So most of the time when health leaders bring policies down to the local level, the implementation is very difficult and unrealistic. At the national level, there needs to be a rule that says if there’s a policy that will be implemented at the lower levels of the health system, especially by nurses or midwives, there has to be a nurse or a midwife at the decision-making table.

For compensation, nurse-midwives are usually afterthoughts. It’s really, really difficult to get just one good paying job as a midwife in Nigeria. You have to do your main job and then do other jobs to make ends meet, especially with current inflation levels. This is why a lot of young people do not want to be nurses or midwives anymore. They’re going to good paying jobs in tech or finance, where the entry level pay is so much better than even for a very qualified nurse or midwife. So countries need to pay nurses and midwives fairly.

The working environment is not really safe. Especially for women, especially as midwives—they’re scared of being raped at work, being sexually assaulted, or being killed. I’ve had situations where I thought a male patient was going to harm me, and I got threats, and then I had to use my people skills to find a way to talk to the patient and try to calm him down. If I don’t feel safe at work, I don’t think I will be able to provide proper care to the patients. So there’s a need to create policies that don’t just make the health worker responsible, but hold the patients responsible.

Q: What actions at a global level do you think would be useful?

The global community can put pressure on governments to address issues around respect and recognition and they can bring awareness to key reports like the State of the World’s Midwifery (S o WM y ) 2021 report, which shows the benefits of investing in midwifery.

The SoWMy report shows that if midwives were supported and invested in by governments around the world, 4.3 million lives would be saved every year. Governments need to clearly see that if you invest in midwives, they’ll be able to get these returns.

National leaders need to provide more leadership opportunities for midwives and include us in policymaking.

Q: What mechanisms do you think can help strengthen respect and recognition of health workers?

The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) is a really strong network and doing a really good job highlighting the impact of midwives and putting us at the forefront.

A lot of midwives in Africa identify positively with the ICM. They amplify our thoughts and our voices a lot. For me, if the global space can try to always consult with international associations like ICM, I think it would go a long way to identify what needs to be done.

Social media can also be really effective. I’m very active on Twitter (@Thejummyadebayo), but most midwives I know are on LinkedIn, Facebook, and WhatsApp. ICM uses these social platforms and their newsletters are very effective in communicating what they’ve been up to, what’s currently happening, and new opportunities to improve advocacy.

Q: What types of policy recommendations would you recommend to the World Health Organization?

The World Health Organization should develop a basis of what a midwife is supposed to do and what a nurse is supposed to do to give a basic picture of their role. The ICM has some frameworks on what a midwife is supposed to do and the World Health Organization could decide to adopt them.

In Nigeria, midwives’ work has been dictated by doctors and in some hospitals, midwives are not allowed to perform certain roles they’ve been trained to do. I can say that if midwives were allowed to do certain jobs, a lot of deaths would have been prevented. And quality of life for certain patients would have improved drastically because time is very important in health. Every little time delay affects the outcome of the patient. Let governments know that by not letting a certain cadre of health workers perform their full role, you are shortchanging yourself in improving the health outcomes of people in your country.

Q: What gender transformative actions do you think are needed?

When it comes to leadership, there are not a lot of women who can help make decisions for us. It’s usually men at the top making decisions. It’s like they are creating maternal and child health policies without asking the midwives—the main people doing deliveries at the local level—to help shape them. The person at the front line knows so much better. So national leaders need to provide more leadership opportunities for midwives and include us in policymaking.

There also needs to be a lot more investment in educating nurses and midwives. We can’t always afford the education we want, based on our pay and time away from work. It’s not easy as a woman juggling jobs, children, a family, and housework. So I see a lot of nurses not furthering their education and reaching their full potential.

The Strengthening Respect and Recognition for Health Workers: Strategies and Recommendations report was funded by the Johnson & Johnson Foundation. Thanks to Helen Cornman, an IntraHealth consultant, for conducting or co-conducting many of the interviews for the report.

By Olajumoke Adebayo

Midwife, advocate, and founder of Reprolife

By Carol Bales

Strategic communications manager

Policy & Advocacy International Day of the Midwife Health Workers Midwives Nurses Nigeria

Olajumoke giving a tetanus toxoid vaccine during a client's antenatal visit. Photo provided by Olajumoke Adebayo for IntraHealth International.

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Olajumoke Adebayo

kseaton — Fri, 07 May 2021 14:36:37 +0000

Olajumoke Adebayo Midwife, advocate, and founder of Reprolife kseaton May 07, 2021

Olajumoke Adebayo is a midwife and advocate in Nigeria. She’s part of the International Confederation of Midwives’ Young Midwife Leaders program. She’s also the founder of Reprolife, a social enterprise that provides access to reproductive health information and services for young Nigerians, especially girls and women. Olajumoke engages midwives in advocacy for better working conditions and is creating a policy framework to strengthen midwifery care.

Nigeria

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SwitchPoint Virtual Exchange

kseaton — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 16:55:19 +0000

SwitchPoint Virtual Exchange kseaton November 02, 2020

November 19, 2020 10:00am - 12:30pm EST

Join us for the second SwitchPoint Virtual Exchange, November 19, 10am – 12:30 pm EST.

Following our successful first attempt at taking SwitchPoint into the digital realm with The Global Fund SwitchPoint Virtual Exchange in September, SwitchPoint and IntraHealth are thrilled to announce a new virtual event in partnership with Women For Health, funded by UKAID, and implemented by DAI.

Women for Health SwitchPoint Virtual Exchange: The Power of Female Health Workers in Nigeria will amplify the voices of rural women health workers along with global leaders, artists, students, and policy heads. This interactive virtual gathering will focus on female health workers and will highlight a successful eight-year endeavor to engage rural women in building sustainable health systems.

Addressing both the challenges and successes communities face—from health care access to internal displacement, trauma, shortages, and inequities—this SwitchPoint Virtual Exchange will dive into the resilience and ingenuity of local leadership in addressing critical global health issues.

Registration is free and open.

Women for Health SwitchPoint Virtual Exchange: The Power of Female Health Workers in Nigeria

DAI

Women For Health

UKAID

IntraHealth International

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/women-for-health-the-power-of-female-health-worker…

Our Participation

Participants

Toyin Saraki

Founder-President of The Wellbeing Foundation Africa

Joe Abah

Nigeria Country Director, DAI

Fati Abubakar

Photojournalist

Fatima Adamu

National Program Manager, Women for Health

Adetoro Adegoke

Lead Senior Technical Advisor, DAI

Jenny Baker

Senior Vice President, DAI Global Health

Nonnie Egbuna

Visual Storyteller

Fatima Gebi

Advocate & Youth Activist

Zan Northrip

Executive Vice President for the Development Partners Group, DAI

Cill Soul

Musician

Nigeria SwitchPoint

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Three Early Digital Health COVID-19 Response Success Stories

kseaton — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 13:25:34 +0000

Three Early Digital Health COVID-19 Response Success Stories kseaton March 27, 2020

March 27, 2020

Here's what makes them efficient and effective during a pandemic.

Coronavirus infection rates are climbing exponentially around the world with over 440,000 confirmed cases and 20,000 deaths so far. Governments, donors, and health workers are scrambling to find digital health solutions they can use in COVID-19 response activities.

While we desperately need innovative solutions now, we must be patient and:

Avoid pilotitis that results in more failed ICT4D interventions
Stop siloed systems development that replicates existing processes
Resist complicated technologies that divert scarce resources

We all need to follow the Principles for Digital Development as we respond to country needs. This is a world-stopping emergency, and we all are moving fast. However, we must focus on solutions that:

Foster government and community ownership
Build on existing systems and familiar technology
Incentivize long-term usefulness with flexible functionality

Only with measured and appropriate digital health technology solutions will we be efficient and effective in our response to COVID-19.

Subscribe Now for more Digital Health Case Studies

Digital Health COVID-19 Response Success Stories

There are three early successes that showcase how information and communication technologies (ICT4D) can support rapid responses to communicable disease outbreaks, like COVID-19. Each of these implementations build on the three perquisites above and decades of collective experience in emergency response within governments and across the development sector.

Let us hope that more of these 60+ digital health solutions become future COVID-19 response success stories.

Liberia Prepares for COVID-19 with mHero

IntraHealth International and UNICEF created mHero in August 2014 to support health sector communication during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. mHero is a two-way communication platform that connects ministries of health with frontline health workers in even the remotest regions, allowing for real-time information exchange and a more effective outbreak response.

Lessons learned from the Ebola response clearly show that fast, informative communication to frontline health workers, and immediate, precise case reporting from them, were useful in engaging communities, managing rumors, and mitigating public health threats.

Today Liberia’s Ministry of Health is still using mHero as a surveillance and response platform for a range of diseases, conditions, and events. Alerts starting at the facility level can be sent to District Surveillance Officers and up through the health system to the central Ministry. The central Ministry of Health can also send out information to frontline health workers – all disaggregated by cadre or by county for targeted information or educational messages.

The government has adapted mHero to surveil for potential COVID-19 cases and send COVID-19 messages to health workers as part of the country’s response to the epidemic. This long-term usage and quick adaptation of an existing digital health solution is a prime example of why government ownership of digital health systems is critical for epidemic disease response.

South Africa Educates on COVID-19 with Turn.io

Praekelt.Org created COVID-19 Connect by using Turn.io technology that delivers automated informational responses to the most frequently asked questions about COVID-19 and the coronavirus in South Africa.

Since its launch on Sunday night with the National Department of Health, the COVID-19 Connect WhatsApp-based helpline engaged with over 1.5 million South Africans, sending over 15 million messages using the World Health Organization’s up-to-the-minute information, coupled with localized news updates and information on prevention, symptoms, treatment, risks, traveling, and testing.

WHO launched a global COVID-19 WhatsApp service, building on Turn.io’ success, to provide the latest news and information on coronavirus to 2 billion people. The service includes details on symptoms and how people can protect themselves, and provides the latest situation reports and infection numbers in real time. More than 10 million people have used the system so far.

Launch WHO COVID-19 now on your mobile phone

COVID-19 Connect shows how we can successfully introduce true innovations in an emergency by leveraging existing systems and familiar technology that is already adopted at scale. Governments already know how to localize WHO content and no users needed WhatsApp training.

Nigeria Tracks COVID-19 with CommCare

Dimagi built a free template application for CommCare, which fully implements the WHO FFX Protocol for contact tracing and case investigation to support rapid deployment of COVID-19 response solutions. More than 200 organizations accessed the template in the first 24 hours since it was released, and soon it will be updated with seven new languages.

On March 1, Ogun State Commissioner for Health Dr. Tomi Coker announced that they deployed CommCare, which was developed in less than 24 hours, for patient risk assessments and contract tracing in the southern Nigerian state.

This week, the directorate of science technology and innovation in Sierra Leone will start developing CommCare digital health solutions for contact tracing to contain the potential spread of COVID-19.

CommCare demonstrates how flexible functionality with permissive, open source licensing allows governments to adapt international solutions to local context for immediate use in fast-moving pandemics. Dimagi is even giving pro bono subscriptions for CommCare to all COVID-19 response applications through May 2021.

Potential Digital Health Success Stories

These three solutions add to a growing corpus of potential digital health solutions for COVID-19 response that we’ve featured on ICTworks:

Technologists, we need your ideas to build a truly comprehensive list of possible digital health solutions. Governments, donors, and implementers, check out the full list of 65+ potential solutions for coronavirus response.

This article was originally published on ICTworks on March 25, 2020. You can find the original post here.

By Wayan Vota

Former director of digital health

COVID-19 Digital Health Liberia Nigeria South Africa

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Picture It: Genius Ideas for Global Good

intrahealth — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:14:45 +0000

Picture It: Genius Ideas for Global Good

intrahealth October 10, 2017

Picture It: Evidence-Based Incentive Strategies for Health Workers Can Increase Access to Health Care in Rural Nigeria

intrahealth — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:14:45 +0000

Picture It: Evidence-Based Incentive Strategies for Health Workers Can Increase Access to Health Care in Rural Nigeria

intrahealth October 10, 2017

Picture It: Out of Midwifery School and Hard at Work

intrahealth — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:10:51 +0000

Picture It: Out of Midwifery School and Hard at Work

intrahealth October 10, 2017

Picture It: IntraHealth Tumblr Post

intrahealth — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:10:01 +0000

Picture It: IntraHealth Tumblr Post

intrahealth October 10, 2017