Limpopo Initiative for Newborn Care - LINC

18/07/2018

Living Nelson Mandela's legacy... supporting pregnant women at Rethabile CHC in Polokwane

18/07/2018

Living Nelson Mandela's legacy... supporting pregnant women at Rethabile CHC in Polokwane

01/02/2018

We need to start empowering at risk mothers to know how to monitor foetal movement for stillbirths prevention.

While the association between stillbirth and fetal movement is thoroughly discussed within the research community and amongst those who study stillbirth, I do not think that many women are actually told that we need to understand fetal movement in order to prevent stillbirth.

01/02/2018

2.6 million babies die in the first 28 days of life. Most of them in the first week. To achieve universal health coverage and ensure more newborns survive and thrive, we must leave no one behind.

01/02/2018

Key Challenges that Health Workers face when trying to provide high quality maternity care include:

1) Human resources
- Staff shortages and heavy workloads hinder health workers’ ability to provide high quality care to every patient and can cause stress and frustration.
- Lack of specialists or experienced staff such as anesthesiologists can lead to unsafe task-shifting to unqualified personnel.
- Insufficient salaries, benefits and financial incentives often negatively affect motivation among health workers.
- Unsupportive management can leave health workers’ concerns unacknowledged or unaddressed.

2) Education and training
- Inadequate pre-service and in-service training limits health workers’ ability to provide skilled care, especially for high-risk pregnancies or deliveries.
- In-service trainings can be unaffordable, inconvenient or inaccessible for some staff members.

3) Commodities and health services infrastructure
- Unreliable availability of drugs, supplies and equipment can force health workers to administer suboptimal medications or provide care under unsafe or unsanitary conditions.
- Scarcity of blood or infrastructure for blood transfusions is dangerous in cases of obstetric emergencies such as postpartum hemorrhage.
- Poor access to electricity, fuel or clean water is a barrier to high quality care.
- Suboptimal physical layout or insufficient space can make health workers’ jobs more difficult.

4) Referral mechanisms
- Reluctance of mothers to be referred to a higher-level facility may result in midwives feeling pressured to handle high-risk deliveries when they are not comfortable doing so.
- Absence of transport or fuel prohibits transfer to another health facility.

Please do open this link for the full systematic review

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews recently published a qualitative evidence synthesis of factors that influence the provision of intrapartum and postnatal care by skilled birth attendants…

01/02/2018

Kangaroo Father Care💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

This piece was originally published on Makerere University Centre of Excellence for Maternal Newborns and Child Health. My daily work involves moving around six hospitals in East-central Uganda implementing data strengthening interventions to increase capture and quantifying maternal and newborn ind...

01/02/2018

Please check on the 2017 progress report for "Tracking progress towards
universal coverage for women’s,
children’s and adolescents’ health" - Countdown 2013

20/10/2017

Save the Children has a long and successful history of collaborating with newborn health champions to advocate for robust policies and programs to reduce global neonatal mortality. We have worked with pediatricians, midwives, members of parliament, ministers of health, journalists, celebrities, and…

20/10/2017

Let's continue providing care that will improve newborn and child health to reduce morbidity and mortality rates

20/10/2017

Our Project Manager, Dr Joy Summerton, was on yesterday's Observer in an article about breastmilk donation. The article is on page page 34, please do check it out!

04/10/2017

Congratulations to Dr Netsh*tuni on being the first black paediatric oncologist in SA! Limpopo need trailblazers like you for the better life of our children. Salute👏👏👏

My News My Community - Sowetan LIVE.

21/09/2017

MomConnect is a great initiative to walk the pregnancy journey with any parent who is registered until the end of infancy period.

To join visit any South African clinic or dial *134*550 # ^eN5

21/09/2017

Lets get our children vaccinated so they are protected against deadly preventable diseases

Immunisation prevents illness, disability and death from vaccine -preventable diseases, including cervical cancer. Globally, immunisation prevents between two and three million deaths annually. ’t wait–vaccinate. ^eN5

21/09/2017

A great systematic review to help us understand mortality trends and plan better to continue reduce deaths!

Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best...

21/09/2017

This reinforces our need to improve newborn care to reduce under 5 mortality and to meet the Sustainable Development Goals

For years, we’ve heard people question whether investments in the fight against global poverty and disease do any good. Clearly, we believe they do.

21/09/2017

Women who needs surgery need to receive it timeously to save lives of mothers and their babies.

PERSPECTIVE | An investment in safe surgery is an investment in women