TANZANIA, March 2022.
Based on the success of the Safer Births Program, a global research collaboration, the Safer Births Bundle of Care (SBBC) received 4.5 million USD in funding from the Global Financing Facility (GFF), a division of the World Bank to scale up to 30 health facilities in 5 regions in Tanzania.
The project aims to end preventable neonatal deaths by improving newborn resuscitation skills, intrapartum care practices, the quality of Neonatal Care Units. It will also use data for decision making and continuous quality improvement. The goals are to reduce neonatal deaths withing 24 hours of birth by 50%, reduce the number of fresh stillbirths by 25%, and a 10% reduction in maternal deaths.
Making progress
At the first Annual Meeting of the Safer Births Bundle of Care, partners, researchers, and stakeholders from around the world met to review the progress to date. Preliminary results from the project are positive and indicate that the goal of a 50% reduction in newborn mortality is attainable. In the next 3 months, of the project aims to record data from 10,000 births every month, which will be used to further evaluate the impact of the SBBC scale-up.
“We can already see that there has been a good start implementing the Safer Births Bundle of Care. The goal of training 900 health care workers in the first year has already been exceeded, with 1,260 healthcare workers trained so far.”
– Dr. Benjamin Kamala
Key stakeholders from UNICEF, NORAD, the Global Financing Facility, and the Tanzanian Ministry of Health visited health facilities in the Manyara region to learn about the positive preliminary results and participate in hands-on sessions.
A global research-driven collaboration
To date, Safer Births is one of the largest projects on saving perinatal lives. More than 90 papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals. The Safer Births Bundle of Care project is supporting eight new PhD students who are working on complementary studies that evaluate the project and provide evidence for investment case to scale-up both nationally in Tanzania and abroad.
Don’t miss the national television news report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G2f_KfjeMg
Consortium of Implementing Partners:
