Jhpiego nurses working to improve access to quality health care services for
women and families around the world
To celebrate International Nurses' Day on May 12, Jhpiego salutes the
many nurses who are working with Jhpiego's international women's health programs to
increase access to quality health care services for women and their families.
Jhpiego, an international women's health organization affiliated
with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has a 30-year legacy of
training and supporting nurses' efforts to improve the health of women and
children in developing countries.
Nurses are the mainstay of Jhpiego's interdisciplinary health programs.
Nurses are key members of the health care team and play a pivotal role in the
delivery of quality health services. Since its establishment in 1973, Jhpiego
has trained over 15,000 nurses in 101 countries. These nurses in turn have
trained others, building a cadre of skilled providers to serve their communities.
Nurses are working at all levels of their host countries with
policymakers, educators, trainers, managers and providers to develop and implement
programs aimed at expanding access and reducing barriers to quality health services.
Many are involved in developing national standards for performance
improvement or revising the curriculum for nurse midwifery schools. In the past five
years alone, Jhpiego has provided technical assistance to 325 national nursing and
midwifery institutions and the ministries of health and nursing and midwifery
licensing bodies in more than 23 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America,
the Caribbean and Middle East.
Many are working in hospitals, health centers, or other settings to
deliver an array of quality health services to women and their families including
family planning and reproductive health, maternal and neonatal care, HIV/AIDS
prevention, public health, and infection prevention.
With an estimated 42 million people worldwide infected with
HIV/AIDS, an important mission of Jhpiego is to develop innovative training
and education programs on HIV/AIDS for nurses and other providers to help stem
the spread of the infection. In Zambia, for example, nurses using Jhpiego training
materials are teaching community volunteers how to provide home-based care to
people terminally ill with HIV/AIDS.
In the Caribbean, Jhpiego has developed extensive training
materials to improve the quality of counseling services to educate mothers
about vertical transmission of HIV and help youth understand about the health
risks of certain behaviors.
Concerned about the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Malawi,
the Malawi health ministry, with support from Jhpiego, initiated a pilot
project in 2001 to improve infection prevention (IP) practices at seven
participating hospitals. The initiative began with the development of
operational standards covering virtually every part of a hospital, from the
operating room and maternity ward to the administrative office, kitchen,
and laundry, according to Lunah Ncube, a nurse-midwife and Jhpiego program
officer who helped develop the standards.
After baseline assessments were conducted at the seven sites,
IP support teams, led by nurses, trained hospital personnel in proper IP
techniques, such as improvements in hand washing and equipment sterilization.
A follow-up assessment several months later found significant progress in
certain areas at some hospitals, doubling or even tripling the percentage
of criteria met between assessments.
Saving the Lives of Mothers and Newborns
Each year an estimated 515,000 women die during
pregnancy and childbirth, and about 9.3 million late fetal and neonatal
deaths occur. To reduce maternal and infant mortality, Jhpiego is training
skilled providers in the delivery of essential maternal and newborn care
in 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Nurses trained through
Jhpiego are working to save the lives of women and their newborns.
In Indonesia, Jhpiego trained nurses and midwives are
contributing to improving maternal and neonatal health through a number
of interventions, including managing complications of bleeding in
pregnancy and childbirth and newborn breathing and body temperature
complications.
A major component of Jhpiego's training in maternal
and neonatal health is the concept of woman-centered care, an approach
that treats women with dignity and recognizes cultural preferences.
The quality of maternal health care in Zambia has improved substantially
since nurses at many service delivery sites have been trained in
woman-centered care, according to Genevieve Mwale, Jhpiego program
manager in Lusaka. With this approach, women may choose a birthing
position, such as squatting, and may have someone with them during
labor. These are "simple, no-cost interventions" that "facilitate
labor and reduce the incidence of complications," explained Mwale,
a nurse-midwife.
Increasing Access to Quality Reproductive Health Care
Jhpiego has been a leader in the field of international
family planning/reproductive health care from its start 30 years ago.
Trained through Jhpiego, nurses around the world are working to deliver
a full range of family planning and reproductive health services.
Usually women have to go to a health care facility to
receive family planning services. But in many developing countries,
health centers are few and far between. In Ghana, specially trained
community health nurses will help overcome this barrier to access by
living in rural villages and "carrying the services directly to the
villagers' doorsteps," said Abigail Kyei, a nurse-midwife and
country representative in Jhpiego's office in Accra. When the nurses
complete the new two-year program, developed with support from
Jhpiego, they will be assigned to rural communities where they will
provide basic prevention and referral services, including family
planning and HIV/AIDS prevention, directly to residents in their homes.
About Jhpiego
For nearly 40 years, Jhpiego, (pronounced "ja-pie-go"), has empowered front-line health
workers by designing and implementing simple, low-cost, hands-on solutions that
strengthen the delivery of health care services, following the
household-to-hospital continuum of care. We partner with community- to
national-level organizations to build sustainable, local capacity through
advocacy, policy and guidelines development, and quality and performance
improvement approaches.
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