PHOTO ESSAY: Report: A Decade of Change for Newborn Survival

A 3-day training workshop of trainers on neonatal resuscitation in the context of essential newborn care was started on Wednesday in Kigali for nursing tutors and preceptors.

As Dr. Jean de Dieu Ngirabega, director general of clinical services at the ministry of health, pointed out, infant mortality is still a big problem for the country and the biggest proportion of these deaths consists of neonatal cases. "This training is very important as it will help in increasing the chance of survival for newborn babies," he said.

According to Dr. Josephine Kibaru-Mbae, the director general of the East, Central and Southern Africa Health Community ECSA-HC, an intergovernmental organization that serves as a platform to foster collaboration in health, neonatal deaths are contributing significantly to the infant mortality rate in the ECSA region, ranging between 30 to 60% of the infant mortality.

"This training will serve to enrich nurses and midwives with skills on neonatal resuscitation [by helping babies to breathe] and management," explained Kibaru-Mbae. "It's one of the areas leading to neonatal deaths, yet as we deal with this problem, nurses and midwives will be required to play a key role as the front line health workers."

According to the organizers, this training of trainers will have a long term impact as it will help to ensure that all the nurses that leave school will have the proper skills to take care of the newborn babies.

Josephine Murekezi, a midwife at King Faisal Hospital, said that the training is timely. "Considering the fact that infant deaths are still high, we are really grateful for this training that is improving our skills and the skills of those to whom we will be transferring this knowledge."

Ngirabega remarked that the workshop will contribute to the achievement of both the country's vision and the millennium development goals in child health care and child mortality rate decrease.

The workshop will leave training tools to the participants, which will help them in training their fellows. Organized by ECSA-HC, the workshop was attended by lecturers and trainers from different nursing and midwifery schools from Rwanda.