Uganda, Russia partner to enhance neonatal health

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Russian medical experts have partnered with their Ugandan counterparts to enhance neonatal health.

The joint efforts kicked off with a two-day training of the Ugandan medical experts from the leading referral hospitals (Mulago, Kawempe, Entebbe and Naguru) in the country at Mulago Specialised Women and Neonatal Hospital in Kampala on Thursday and Friday (April 25-26).

Effective neonatal health remains a critical challenge for Uganda and, according to the health ministry, neonatal mortality rate remains high at 27 deaths per 1,000 live births.

The ministry adds that maternal mortality stands at 189 per 100,000 live births, which implies a high number of mothers and babies who die.

Worse still, some medical experts believe that the statistics might be much higher, especially in rural areas where there is under-reporting.

Some of the trainees apply hands on to the mannequin during neonatal training at Mulago Specialized Women and Neonatal Hospital. Courtesy photo

As a starting point, the Russian medical scholars under the Medical Mission of Ekaterina Glok enhanced the capabilities of Ugandan health officials in basic care of newborns, infection prevention and control, birth fissures and handling babies’ breathing difficulties at delivery.

Those trained ranged from gynaecologists, nurses, midwives to obstetricians.

“Our engagement will involve advanced skills and techniques on reducing maternal and infant mortality rates in Uganda. We expect to see an increase in survival rates and decrease in disability among newborns thereafter,’’ Ekaterina Alekseevna Glock, the team leader of the Russian medical experts, said.

She added: "They [Ugandan medics] will be able to implement modern approaches to therapy for both full term and pre-term newborns with the development in their profession. With continued collaboration with Uganda, we will conduct more training and consultations from more remote areas for a bigger impact".

Ekaterina said the Medical Mission of Ekaterina Glock has travelled around several African countries to conduct training courses for professional development.

John Paul Bagala, a gynaecologist from the health ministry, said the engagement demonstrated strengthening collaboration efforts between Russia and Uganda and other African countries in tackling the health burdens the continent is struggling with.

"As Ministry of Health, we continue to improve service delivery across our facilities by enhancing the skills of the frontline health workers and thus the need to borrow a leaf and learn from other countries like Russia. Moscow has a low mortality rate compared to ours and in this training, experts shared with us different techniques we can also apply into our health care systems to avert the discouraging trends," he said.

Accordingly, the training will contribute to enhancing a more skilled workforce in facilities to serve the general population of Uganda.

“If we do not have a skilled workforce in our facilities, it means that even though patients go to those facilities, they will not be served appropriately. We expect to see more clinical experts visit us in fields of radiotherapy and surgery transplant where our health systems have not yet advanced,” Bagala added.

Dr Peter Ntuyo, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Mulago Hospital, said such trainings play a vital role in equipping medics with modern skills needed to manage similar conditions when with patients.

“We have been hands-on using mannequins for perfection of our skills that we apply in the wards and also learned to manage babies who are born when not breathing well. Patient safety and improving on skills to manage a number of conditions is the goal of every medical professional,” he said.

Ntuyo added that the health practitioners need a lot of reminders on infections because they have emerged as number three killer for women and number two killer for babies.

“We thank our partners from Russia who have trained us and we shall also train others which will reduce on the referrals that lead to death of some babies from different health facilities,” he said.

Justine Nakiyingi, a midwife in charge of the emergency unit at Mulago Hospital, lauded the experience and new ideas learned such as inserting the endocare tube, noting she would pass on the skill to others.

“I am going to share every skill I have gotten from here, mentor and train others because it is one of the requirements for everyone working in an emergency unit,” she said.