The Wellbeing Foundation and The Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has announced the fourth quarter evaluation phase of its innovative Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care and Quality Improvement Programme, currently being implemented at public primary and secondary healthcare facilities in Kwara State since 2014.

The WBFA and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine will be having a follow up in facilities that were trained in quality improvement, Maternal death Audit and perinatal death audit.

This will focus on the action plan each facility made after their Quality Improvement Training.

Each facility will present on their formation of Quality Improvement team, number of meetings they have held, what action plans were developed after the meeting and which of and at what stage of implementation is the action plan.

The follow up training will be holding between October 14th and Saturday, October 25th 2019 in Patigi, Ifelodun, Oyun, Ekiti, and Oke Ero Local Government Areas of Kwara.

Training on Emergency Obstetric Care (EOC) would also hold in Moro Local Government Area of the state between Sunday, November 18th and Saturday, November 29th 2019.

“It is a facility based training, and therefore we would be going from one hospital to another, where the trainees would have the opportunity to make presentations and immediately put into practice what they have learnt”, says Wellbeing Foundation Africa's Kwara State Program Manager, Isaac Ejakhegbe.

"At the end of the training, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Wellbeing Foundation Africa expect the participants to translate the skills acquired into better care for new born and mothers in the state."

This according to Dr Mohammed Hauwa, Senior Technical Programme Officer of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine " will mean a measurable reduction in deaths of pregnant women during or after birth, still births and infant mortality in general."

Further Monitoring and Evaluation Sessions would also commence between Sunday, December 9th and Saturday, December 13th 2019 across the facilities

The Wellbeing Foundation Africa Founder, H.E. Toyin Ojora Saraki, stated:

"I have been pleased by the encouraging progress and impact of the EmONC partnership that we have been implementing since 2015, as a demonstration of the benefits of simulation case scenarios, using lifelike lo-fi anatomical models, to improve the skills and quality of healthcare services knowledge and delivery, throughout Kwara State, having to date trained 600 healthcare providers, and equipped skills laboratories for continuous training, in line with global best practice to meet the challenges faced at the frontline of health in low and middle-income countries"

" To quote The Lancet Commission on High Quality Health Systems, Health system quality is a determinant of health. Improving quality of care, and not only increasing access to care, is necessary for the success of the Sustainable Development Goals and Universal Health Coverage."

"Over 8 million lives were needlessly lost due to poor quality health systems globally in 2016.

3.6 million of these deaths were due to a lack of access while 5 million were due to poor quality; improving the quality of maternal and newborn obstetric health services could decline maternal deaths by half"

"Health systems cannot be resilient to shocks without quality. At present, health systems in many low- and middle-income countries fail their communities. Good health care should not be a luxury only available to people in high-income countries or to the wealthiest in low-income countries. Too often, health providers do not follow basic clinical guidelines, omit routine screenings, fail to conduct necessary patient assessments. As a result, they commonly misdiagnose patients or prescribe inappropriate treatment."

"Poor quality is not just a function of individual providers. Health systems as a whole are struggling to provide competent care: they cannot guarantee safe procedures, timely care, referral, and care continuity for chronic disease. Primary care is underperforming, with many people preferring hospitals or specialists instead. Fewer than half of women delivering in a facility in 41 countries had a provider check on them within one hour of delivery, a critical window for detecting complications, while surgical procedures result in infections for one in ten African patients."

"The Wellbeing Foundation Africa - Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine's EmONC partnership seeks to engender Kwara State Health Facilities with a high-quality health systems approach by putting people first. By modernizing the education of the health workforce and creating workplaces that enable quality reinforcement, participating health workers are acquiring competency-based education that emphasizes problem solving, strong communication, and respectful treatment"

"These healthworkers can thus consistently deliver obstetric care that improves health outcomes, is nimble to respond to changing needs, and engenders trust among the populations they serve."