Community tackles infant mortality

New model for newborn care promoted throughout Senegal

For every 100 Senegalese babies born, six of them die before their first birthday. Although this rate has consistently improved over the years, it is still unacceptably high. USAID, the Government of Senegal, and Senegalese communities are working to change that.

At the District Health Center in Ziguinchor, the locally-elected health committee has just bought a warming table for newborn babies. Ziguinchor is in the beginning phase of training all its nurses in essential newborn care techniques, and one of the critical elements of caring for a newborn is keeping it warm in the critical hours after birth.

“This is the first time we have had a useful tool to warm babies,” said midwife Bintou Ndour. She said she hadn’t realized that locally-made warming tables were feasible. The table was crafted by a local carpenter, copied from a photograph of a warming table designed as part of a USAID-supported pilot project in another region. When the USAID-supported training of nurses in the region was announced, USAID hoped communities would supply the warming tables as their contribution to the effort. Ziguinchor, led by its health committee, jumped at the chance to contribute to newborn survival, and commissioned the carpenter to build the table – all before the nurses’ training even began.

Essential newborn care includes everything from basic preventive care during and immediately after birth, to resuscitation of babies with birth asphyxia, to identification of danger signs and management of infections after birth and in the first year of life. After the successful USAID-supported pilot activity in the Kebemer District in 2004, the Government of Senegal adopted a package of essential newborn services which is being implemented nationally. So far the training of medical personnel on essential newborn care practices has started up in nine districts in three of Senegal’s regions.

“Ziguinchor picks up technology faster than other regions,” said Matar Camara, Child Survival Specialist at USAID Dakar. “This community has already made an investment to improve newborn survival, even though the people had just learned about the project and training.”

Madame Sao, president of the health committee who bought the warming table, humbly smiled as her fellow committee members, midwives, and USAID representatives applauded her as they admired the new table. “We are collecting money to improve health care in this health center. This money belongs to the patients of the center and we wanted to use the money by giving them back something that will help them,” she said.