Our mission is to help save lives on the day of birth through evidence-based knowledge and innovative training and treatment solutions that result in improved clinical care.
When implemented well, Safer Births has been shown to reduce newborn deaths by 50% and stillbirths by 25%. It’s our goal also to reduce maternal deaths by 10%. By widespread scale-up in low-income countries, Safer Births could save hundreds of thousands of lives, every year.
Key achievements
- Proved that Safer Births innovations help save more lives.
- Developed data-driven quality improvement programs including targeted simulation training, creating a culture of excellence.
- Developed research tools that were transformed to life-saving medical devices in the hands of Tanzanian midwives.
- Observed and collected data from over 50,000 consecutive deliveries at Haydom and 4,000 resuscitation cases, making Safer Births the most comprehensive study on newborn resuscitation ever.
- Provided new knowledge on fetal heart rate, transition of newborns at birth and newborn resuscitation, improving international guidelines.
- Completed 12 PhD fellows, including 4 from Tanzania. 15 ongoing PhD fellows, 7 from Tanzania.
- Presented over 100 Safer Births abstracts at leading international conferences with more to come.
- Published more than 100 papers and counting.
We wanted to make a difference
Every birth-related death is a tragedy, and on a global scale, too many babies continue to die due to lack of proper care. We wanted to make a difference, so we initiated the Safer Births project to establish better knowledge and develop products for improved training and treatment. We were convinced that systematic, simulation-based training would transform into better clinical care, increase perinatal survival, and at the end of the day, contribute to safer births.
It was extremely important for us to address critical needs and not burden the health providers and health systems in Tanzania. Our research tools, training, and new innovations should make the work easier for the providers and facilitate optimal care for every mother and newborn. With this in mind, each training, research protocol, and new piece of equipment was developed collaboratively with the users. The overarching goal was to foster confidence, competence, capacity, and commitment for everyone involved.
Through the Safer Births project, we obtained new important knowledge about newborns as they transitioned from their intrauterine to extrauterine lives, developed more efficient training methods, and implemented affordable, adaptable, and user-friendly training and therapy equipment. When implemented properly as a Safer Births bundle, the project proved that the innovations have the potential to create impact and improve perinatal survival on a global scale.
DR. EMANUEL Q. NUWASS
Director at Haydom Lutheran Hospital
DR. HEGE L. ERSDAL
Principal Investigator
The first baby saved
Baby Danieli
Danieli was not breathing when he was born. With the newly implemented Safer Births project, a young nurse at Haydom Hospital had been trained in the Helping Babies Breathe program. She dried the baby, suctioned, and stimulated him. Still, he was not breathing, so she started to ventilate. After continuous ventilation, Danieli became the first baby resuscitated in the Safer Births project. Danieli survived.