The purpose of this project is to improve maternal and child survival in Bangladesh through the prevention and interruption of pathways to sepsis. Through demonstration sites where innovative approaches are tested, the project works with communities, midwives, and hospital care providers to improve diagnostics and early intervention of childhood infections, and strengthen health systems. The project provides training for 60 midwives and birth attendants, 45 nurses and doctors, 100 primary health care providers and 12 paramedics. It also aims to improve health care responses to suspected sepsis episodes, benefiting 18,400 pregnant women and their newborns and 16,600 children under the age of five. The University of British Columbia is working in partnership with the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh to implement this project. This project is part of Canada’s Maternal, Newborn and Child Health commitment. The maximum CIDA contribution to this project includes $10,000 for monitoring purposes.
Results achieved as of the end of the project (February 2016) include: (1) 41 maternal syndromic sepsis cases were treated; (2) 1,036 (346 female, 690 male) newborn and early childhood syndromic sepsis cases were treated; (3) an estimated 316 children under-five were saved and 22 maternal deaths were avoided; (4) a reduction of delay in care for sick children reduced from 2 days to 1.8 days; (5) 265 Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) were trained and regularly conducted household visits; (6) 1,934 maternal emergency and 2,538 pediatric emergency calls were made to the call center; (7) 66% improvement in household capacity to take early action and to use call-in centre for suspected serious infection of post-partum mothers, newborns and under-five children; and (8) health facility deliveries increased from 20% to 45% representing 2,538 deliveries. These results contributed to improving maternal and child survival by interrupting pathways to sepsis in two rural sub-districts of Bangladesh covering a total population of about 500,000.
