Launched emergency care training for midwives to end preventable maternal deaths in Lao PDR

27 September 2019, Vientiane Capital – UNFPA Lao PDR supported the Ministry of Health of Government of Laos to launch and conduct emergency obstetric training for midwives to end preventable maternal deaths in September 15th-27th 2019. The training was supported by the Asia Pacific Regional Office and Burnett Institute who is supporting the regional office to run HMS courses in countries of the Asia Pacific Region. Although Lao PDR was one of the fastest countries in the world to reduce maternal deaths over the last few decades, Laos still has a higher Maternal Mortality Ratio than the regional average. In addition, recent global estimates on maternal mortality by inter UN agency group showed that the progress of reducing maternal deaths in Laos is getting slow down. In order to strive for this difficult stage, UNFPA is supporting midwifery which is shown to have a great impact on reducing maternal deaths.

The purpose of the training was to strengthen the clinical knowledge and skills of midwives to manage two major causes of maternal deaths in Laos: Post-Partum Haemorrhage and Pre-Eclampsia/Eclampsia in Laos. The training used Helping Mother Survive series developed by JPEIGO, of which character is that the training is to be followed by Low Does High Frequency (LDHF) practice sessions by midwives who joined the training in their workplaces to sustain and spread obtained knowledge and skills.

During the first week, 7 senior midwives from different provinces participated in the training to be a “master trainer” who will be responsible for rolling out the training to midwives in every birth facility. Master trainers learned from basics to advance to deal with those major complications to enable them to teach midwives in facilities where a medical doctor is not deployed. They learned also teaching methodology and coordination needed to arrange the training to be able to conduct training on their own.

In the second week, 8 “champion” midwives from different facilities received the training from senior midwife master trainers who learned how to conduct the training in the first week. Although there were some challenges found such as midwives’ difficulty in some calculation when administering medicine, the training instructor Rachel Smith from Burnet Institute closely followed it up and midwives finally showed confidence in that weak area.

On the last day of the training, all the 15 midwives received certificates to qualify their ability to teach other midwives. Those 15 midwives are to conduct LDHF practical sessions continuously in their workplaces to spread and sustain the knowledge and skills learned, which is a necessary continuous effort for clinicians to enable the best attainable standard of health care for mothers. Further rollout the training will be followed by close collaboration by the government of Laos and UNFPA Laos, in line with the national EmOC training team supported by other UN agencies.