Year-End Update: Midwives Save Lives Project
In March of 2020, the Midwives Save Lives – Les Sages Femmes Sauvent Des Vise project will come to an end after four years of training midwives and health care workers alike to manage complicated deliveries and ultimately save the lives of mothers and babies in Tanzania.
This week, project funders and facilitators from Canada and Tanzania, met in the Shinyanga region to evaluate some of the key successes of MSL and hear first-hand accounts from community members whose lives have been positively impacted by the project. But before we dive in to some of those success as well as the next steps for MSL, here is a little bit of background on the project:
MSL began in 2016 and is funded by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada. It operates in four target countries: Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia and Tanzania. In Tanzania, the project is focused in two regions in the Lake Zone: Simiyu and Shinyanga.
The key goals of this project include:
- Increasing the skills and competencies of pre- and in-service midwives
- Strengthening health systems to work more effectively with and for midwives
- Addressing low levels of demand for maternal, newborn and child health services at the community level
- And strengthening the capacity of midwifery professional associations to improve the quality and coverage of midwifery care.
#TEAMTAMA and its partners at Cuso International, the Canadian Association of Midwives, and Global Affairs Canada are extremely proud of the results from MSL…
- 460 midwives from Simiyu and Shinyanga trained on life-saving pre, post, and antenatal care skills
- 40 midwife mentors trained to continue passing along skill sets to new midwives entering into the field or those who have not had the opportunity to receive MEST training
- 150 community health workers trained to speak to community members about issues related to maternal care (family planning, visiting a hospital to deliver, etc)
- 100 health administrators trained to oversee the project and record results