Zachary Ochieng
3 March 2008
Nairobi — RESUSCITATION CAN NOW SAVE newborns from birth asphyxia, a new study shows.
Conducted at Pumwani Maternity Hospital, Kenya's main maternity which provides delivery care to over 17,000 women per year, the study found resuscitation training for health workers to be critical.
"Effective resuscitation could prevent some of these deaths as well as improve the outcomes of surviving asphyxiated babies," the study says.
"However, provision of appropriate newborn resuscitation care is dependent on the presence of an adequately skilled health worker in the home or the facility."
In higher-income settings newborn life support (NLS) training courses have proliferated.
Pumwani has approximately 90 nurses primarily responsible for delivery care and newborn resuscitation with 14 on duty at any one time.
The course teaches an A (Airway), B (Breathing) and C (Circulation) approach to resuscitation, laying down a clear step-by -step strategy for the first minutes of resuscitation at birth.
The primary outcome for the study was the proportion of resuscitation episodes in which appropriate initial resuscitation steps were practised as recommended in the NLS training.
THE STUDY WAS CONDUCTED WITH the permission of the hospital management, to whom the researchers explained the implications, purpose and voluntary nature of participation.
Similar information was made available in written form to all labour ward and theatre staff and written informed consent was obtained from all health workers prior to their practice being observed.
Ethical approval for the conduct of the study was obtained from the Kenya Medical Research Institute and the National Ethics Committee.
The researchers state in their findings that there were significant reductions in the frequency of inappropriate and potentially harmful practices and improvements in overall resuscitation scores.
Our findings suggest that implementation of a simple one day newborn resuscitation training can be followed by significant, short-term improvement in health workers' practices.
"To ensure a high proportion of all resuscitation episodes are appropriately managed clearly a large majority of providers must be trained.
"Evidence on effects on long term performance or clinical outcomes, however, remain inconclusive and can only be established by larger trials, " the researchers say.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The East African. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
