Save Mother and Child Community Intervention Project Presentation By Chuka Oguzie

Contact Details Name: Chukwuka Oguzie Address: No 4 Nkpogu Road, off Trans Amadi Road, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Mobile: and E

Introduction The Save Mother and Child Community Intervention Project is aimed at training community based unskilled midwives and pregnant women in hard to reach rural areas through specially designed Prenatal, antenatal and postnatal video programs, creating emergency response lines and channels for the communities and connecting them to doctors and midwives by sms via a web portal. The sms web portal can only be accessed by doctors and midwives to answer questions raised after weekly video sessions. The SMCCIP will be video and sms based.

Introduction contd. Based on what I have noticed in communities, I found out that a lot of pregnant women in rural communities patronize community based unskilled midwives that are not properly trained but they think have gained experience over time in giving care to and delivering babies for pregnant women in communities. This has led to a high percentage of mother and child mortality because they lack the required knowledge and are not equipped for handling complications and emergencies.

Introduction contd. Also a significant population of rural women own mobile phones and these mobile phones, are all they need to participate in the SMCCI project.

The Goal of The SMCCI project The goal of the SMCCI project is to connect pregnant women in hard to reach areas with professionals outside their reach using technological improvements, to train the community based midwives to give better care and create emergency response lines with the nearest better equipped hospitals in other to reduce mother and child mortality rates by 50% and above during and after child birth.

Objectives. To educate, train and expose the community based midwives to improved and better ways of care giving to pregnant women during the prenatal, antenatal and post natal stages. And in cases of emergencies what they need to do and how to reach out for help. To educate rural women on what the need to know about prenatal, antenatal and postnatal child care and other health education. To involve medical experts and international health organizations in this project.

Resources Needed The resources needed are; -Volunteer Doctors and midwives by health organizations -TV sets -A web portal to receive and send sms. -Pre recorded DVDs containing prenatal, antenatal and postnatal lectures in English language or local languages. -DVD players -Speakers and public address system -Power source or a small generator

The Operational Process The operational processes are thus; -Hard to reach communities are identified and selected in Various local governments in Nigeria. - Volunteer doctors and midwives are known and are connected to the web sms portal that receives all the questions sent by the women in the communities. -The resources needed as highlighted below are deployed to us for the selected communities or local government areas. We can move the resources from community to community within the same state depending on the distances apart daily to save cost.

The Operational process contd. -The sessions will be broken down into prenatal, antenatal and postnatal sessions. The sessions can be done for say 2 hours per week on selected days of the week for different communities. -A particular day of the week and time is selected for the sessions. The sessions can be done in the evenings to enable the women go for their daily businesses or paid jobs.

The Operational process contd. A prerecorded video session on prenatal or antenatal or postnatal is played for a session and questions raised by the participants are sent by sms to the web portal where the volunteer doctors and midwives receives them and responds to the questions by replying the sms sent either to the person that asked the question immediately or on a later date or to our trained staff that will explain the answers to the person in a way she would understand.

The Operational Process contd. This cycle continues. The women will be informed that they are free to send in questions at any time of the week and the volunteer doctors and midwives can always log into the portal and answer questions raised and reply directly to the originator of the question by sms thru the phone number that sent the questions. Community heads and women opinion leaders will be visited to solicit their support and involvement.

The Operational process contd. -Over time, a pattern of questions will emerge and our staff will be trained based on that pattern. The aim is for us to be able to answer questions raised immediately so that others present will benefit from it. Also all the questions raised in a session can be answered in the next session before the next lesson begins. -These processes/sessions can go an for a period of 2 -3 years and the impact on the mortality rate evaluated to see if the goal was reached and the necessary adjustments made.

Resources Needed -TV Set -DVD Player -Audio Speakers -Public address system -Power source/Gen set -Web sms portal -Note that only one web portal is needed for the entire project if the initiative is implemented anywhere in the world. The resources will be moved between communities depending on the distance.

Staffing and logistics costs The staffing and logistics costs depends on the coverage areas.

Thank you