Helping Babies Breathe in Kinshasa

It is now Tuesday night here in Kinshasa, and we have completed our first 2 neonatal resuscitation training courses. Our team consists of 3 physicians from the U.S., our team administrator, the local LDS Charities missionary couple, and a local Congolese doctor who has taught many courses with us in the past.

We taught at a meeting hall which belongs to the Catholic Church near St. Joseph's Hospital. In our Monday course we taught 30 midwives (accoucheuses) and 2 physicians and Tuesday we taught 39 midwives and 3 physicians for a total of 74 people so far. These providers work in about 25 different health centers, maternity centers, or hospitals here in Kinshasa. The Kingasani Maternity Hospital in the Masina neighborhood which I have visited on previous trips has about 1000 deliveries per month but no  C-sections.  If a patient needs a C-section, she must be taken to St. Joseph's Hospital which has about 450 deliveries per month of which about 150 are C-sections. Some of the health centers have only a small number of deliveries each month.

Normally a woman purchases her own bulb syringe and brings it to the hospital when she goes into labor for use in case her  baby needs suctioning at the time of the delivery.

When we added up all the deliveries for all the hospitals represented, it totaled about 50,000 per year. Our goal is to get each of these providers to train all the providers in their own hospitals within the next few weeks. Each team receives a supply of training kits and manuals to take back to their facilities. Each facility also receives a bag and mask kit, a cleanable bulb syringe, and a stethoscope to be used by the providers in their hospitals. This equipment can be taken apart, washed, and sterilized or boiled so that it can be used many times.

The course is based on the Helping Babies Breathe curriculum from the American Academy of Pediatrics (see www.helpingbabiesbreathe.org). The manuals and flipcharts have been translated into French, then digitally sent to China for printing then sent to the LDS Humanitarian Center in Salt Lake City where they were combined with the resuscitation kits and sent in a shipping container to Kinshasa. At the end of the day-long course, each participant received a certificate of attendance in the closing ceremonies. We feel confident that those who are taught these resuscitation skills will make a difference and save many babies who might otherwise not survive.