Project Launch:

The town of Ol' Kalou has a population of 70,273. Roughly 75% of the villages comprising Ol' Kalou are considered rural and have limited access to quality health care, and 40% of expectant mothers are still giving birth at their homes without the supervision of trained healthcare workers. The objective of the Improving Maternal and Child Health Care in Ol' Kalou project is to improve service delivery in the maternity department of Ol' Kalou District Hospital. The specialists in the maternity department are seeking new equipment, such as delivery sets for expecting mothers, an electronic delivery bed, a fetal doppler, a suction machine and a digital blood-pressure machine, that will enable the nursing staff to react faster to unforeseen crises and establish a higher level a care for the pregnant mothers of Ol' Kalou. Funding will allow the hospital to take responsibility for the purchase and transport of the necessary maternity equipment from Nairobi, and will enable the hospital administration to train staff on the usage, installation, and maintenance of new equipment. The project seeks to significantly reduce the amount of women who choose the more dangerous option of giving birth at home over giving birth at the hospital, where the nursing staff reports a 98% success rate in facilitating healthy live births.

 

PROJECT UPDATE

The equipment was installed and the training sessions were performed soon after the community received the grant from World Connect. The new resources are proving to be very useful to the nurses by increasing their control of the delivery process, improving their reaction time in case of emergency, and allowing them to detect child distress before the birth. The increased efficiency of the nurses has allowed them more time to focus on establishing a caring and supportive environment for the mothers and newborns during the delivery process.

 

TESTIMONIALS

“Now in Ol'Kalou, Kenya women of child-bearing age and their babies have a safer medical facility to deliver in and receive efficient and caring support from a nursing staff that now feels better skilled and able to handle the difficulties that arise. This results in an increase in successful births and a decrease in infant and maternal deaths.” – Brittany, Peace Corps Volunteer

"With the new equipment we can be sure that there will be less women delivering their children at home in the rural villages. The result of this is a decrease in infant and maternal deaths at the household level." – Dorcus, Project Leader

"I was able to use the fetal doppler and detected a child's distress before the usual 26 week. An excellent advancement! I was able to educate the mother on stress management and I am confident she will have a successful birth." – Sophia, Project Beneficiary