Phase II of India-Singapore project to reduce maternal mortality will bene‰t 20,000 mothers, newborns in T.N.
On the eve of a grand general election, growth and development statistics may be readily bandied about on the campaign trails of various political parties; yet it is sometimes the quiet work that goes on in the background, and collaborations with partners near and far that make a genuine dierence on the ground when it comes to critical human development areas for India, such as healthcare.
One such project, which is impacting the vital statistics on Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) across Tamil Nadu neonatal hospitals and speciality units, is the result of a collaboration of the State’s Directorate of Public Health (DPH) and Preventive Medicine with Singapore Health Services and Singapore International Foundation (SIF) to impart training on combined obstetric resuscitation emergencies and enhancing maternal and child health (EMCH) services.
Drop in MMR
With Phase I of the project complete and Phase II underway, the project has already yielded results in terms of what the State’s Health Minister, Ma. Subramanian, described a few months ago as a drop in Tamil Nadu’s MMR to 52 per one lakh live births during 2022-2023, after the gure had surged to 90 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under the next two years of the second phase, the EMCH project will train “over 140 Maternal and Child Health (MCH) professionals in Tamil Nadu to identify and manage obstetrics and neonatal emergencies, as well as high-risk pregnancies, and this will be done through a series of workshops and clinical training”, said Shephali Tagore, Team Lead, Singapore International Volunteer
and Senior Consultant, Department of Maternal Foetal Medicine, and Director of International Medical Programme OBGYN, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
The most powerful driver of the programme is to directly target the expansion of the core group of Master Trainers equipped to share their newly-acquired knowledge with their peers to bene t a larger community of Maternal and Child Health (MCH) professionals. In turn, an estimated 20,000 mothers and newborns are expected to bene t from this training, Dr. Tagore added.
Under this rubric, the teams also worked together to review their clinical and non-clinical work processes in obstetrics, anaesthesia, and neonatology – leading to the development and implementation of various protocols to manage postpartum haemorrhage, eclampsia, and other medical complications in participating hospitals.
There is good reason to believe that the formula will work this time, too, for during Phase I, a key achievement of the multidisciplinary Singapore International Volunteer team driving the training eorts was that it successfully trained more than 1,000 local MCH professionals in the State, including obstetricians, anaesthetists, paediatricians, and sta nurses.
Initial target exceeded “This is a 400% increase from the initial target of 200 in three years. A core group of 50 Master Trainers were also identi ed among this pool of Indian participants to cascade the training to peers in their own communities,” noted Jaryll Chan, Division Director, Programmes, Singapore International Foundation, who added that