Expand Maternal Healthcare in Northern Haiti

C2C has exciting news to share since our last report: thanks to the continued support of our amazing GlobalGiving community, we were able to expand our Maternal Health Program to our newest clinic, in Galifète! This marks a huge milestone for C2C and a major improvement for health services in this community. C2C’s team has been hard at work promoting this new service, through live radio sessions, promotional banners, and community meetings with local leaders and youth to raise awareness about our offerings.

Although it’s important to expand the reach of our services by offering the Maternal Health Program in every C2C clinic, it’s just as critical to ensure the quality and sustainability of these services across our network. One way we’ve done this is through capacity building. Since our last report, we evaluated six nurse practitioners who were trained to perform obstetric ultrasound, and they achieved excellent results, averaging over 85% on the evaluation survey. We also developed a plan to train two maternal health nurses who are not yet familiar with ultrasound so that they can develop the skills they need to assess patients. 

We’re proud of the results we’ve achieved since our last report:

• 1,154 first prenatal visits 
• 438 first prenatal visits in first trimester 
• 386 fourth prenatal visits 
• 1,099 obstetrical ultrasounds performed 
• 141 postnatal consultations
• 84 hospital births

Generating demand for our Maternal Health Program through awareness-raising activities and education is always top of mind. We do this through many different strategies, including:

• Community education on the need for immediate care starting in the first weeks of pregnancy.
• Preventive and follow-up phone calls to ensure continuity of care.
• Distribution of special coupons to progressively increase attendance by pregnant and breastfeeding women.
• Implementation of mother’s clubs for women in our Maternal Health Program, which provide education on pregnancy, childbirth, and the importance of facility-based delivery.
• Health education sessions and continuous screening of educational videos in clinic waiting rooms on maternal health, family planning, and local foods that strengthen maternal immunity.
• Ongoing promotion of the benefits of delivering in a health facility and receiving postpartum care from a qualified professional.
• Distribution of postnatal kits for breastfeeding women attending postpartum care.
• Close community follow-up visits for any mother known to have delivered recently (in the past 0–3 days).

Despite ongoing challenges, such as low rates of facility-based deliveries and some follow-up calls being ineffective due to network issues, we are still very hopeful for the future. Our team is always working with our communities to develop innovative solutions to these challenges. For example, to further strengthen prenatal visit attendance, we reached out to 33 traditional birth attendants, or “matrones,” from different communities for potential networking and integration into our Maternal Health Program. In order to improve uptake of prenatal and postnatal care, we focus on behavior change, which takes time. However, C2C is committed to serving our communities for the long term, and we are optimistic that the work we are doing now will improve health outcomes in the years to come – and the consistent support of our GlobalGiving community is what makes this all possible.

Thank you, on behalf of all of our clinical and community health staff in Haiti.

Links:

• Learn more about our ongoing projects on our website