African Woman Alliance: Safe Births

During the course of my work with African Woman Alliance I have learned tons about the maternal health system in Tanzania. As a techie, I am in a different position than the doctor and midwife I work with. They are fantastic clinicians and I cannot believe what amazing things they can do. It is a shame there is not a way to clone them to send to each and every medical facility in the country.

That’s when I start to get a little geeky. For starters, they are working on a baseline of what the medical facilities have and do not have.  The hospital and dispensaries do not have the basic medical supplies online pharmacy no prescription to deliver babies let alone deal with serious injuries. The result in case of an accident or emergency is almost always the same: death.

So how do we deal with this?

Our good doctors created the survey and we put it into a software named Magpi. We are using this platform on tablets and mobile devices. It is incredible for “seeing” the situation. We will take inventory of the medical facilities and assess the situation in regards to maternal health and auditing the tools and equipment they have to provide services. The app will upload the data and it will be available immediately to everyone. Thanks to GPS technology each facility will be shown on a satellite map so you can watch as we make the visits.

Is there any point to taking data?

Once we know where there are outages in the materials, supplies, and the causes of death we can provide ways and means of dealing with it. By mapping the sites we can direct the government and donors exactly to where the problems are occurring. The reports that will be generated will be sent to all of the relevant authorities and some of the irrelevant too to lobby for action on behalf of the people who are meant to get care from these providers.

Don’t the facilities get funds?

The public facilities get funds from the Tanzanian government and many international donors such as USAID.  Private facilities are not typically externally funded but the services tend to be higher priced. For the very poor especially those who are supposed to receive free maternal health there is an incredible gap. One hospital interviewed had 12 births in one night and only had 6 beds. Imagine!

We need help from you to continue this work! If you are or you know a medical professional who is interested in volunteering, please encourage them to get in touch. We need to show these mamas some love and higher quality care.

Check out the blog of Lulu, a volunteer midwife… Great REAL stories

To know more about  our project, check out this link: www.indiegogo.com/projects/digital-revolution-in-africa/