Saving Mothers partners with Kapenguria County Referral Hospital in West Pokot, Kenya. As part of this partnership, there is an ongoing project called the Maternal Continuum of Care Program. This project endeavors to promote prenatal care and hospital deliveries in the area in service of decreasing maternal mortality rates, and minimizing birth complications. While this project is multi-faceted, a hallmark of this program is training local providers in ultrasound, clinical protocols, and surgical procedures. This training also involves in-person trips to provide larger scale surgical interventions for patients and teach local providers to perform these procedures. This would be my first time participating in this trip, and I am eager to provide support to initiatives on the ground and develop skills that would allow me to continue this training going forward. This work has already made an impact in the local community, resulting in a 25% decrease in neonatal mortality in the area. Sustaining this program will serve to benefit infants and mothers in years to come.
This project serves women and infants in West Pokot, Kenya, which positively impacts the entire West Pokot community. This population has low healthcare usage penetration due to barriers in access to care, and the fact that limited care is available. As a result, there is a high rate of home birth which can lead to poorer outcomes for mother and child. This program, which provides training to local providers and on-the-ground surgical interventions using existing healthcare infrastructure, can and does make a meaningful impact in the lives and health of these patients.
This project is ongoing and has already made a measurable impact in the West Pokot community, with noted improvement in the prenatal care utilization, increase in hospital deliveries and decrease in neonatal mortality. This trip has multiple aims, including educating local healthcare providers on safety protocols, providing clinical training relevant to management of gynecologic issues and birth complications, and providing pro-bono surgical interventions to patients with birth complications. As a resident OB/GYN interested in global health, care delivery, and gynecologic surgery, I anticipate that this experience, which will involve training local providers and caring for patients in a low resource, rural setting, will help me grow as a physician and provide new perspective and context as I approach my practice going forward. I have so much to gain from experiencing first-hand how care delivery is different in a low-resource setting, compared to my experiences training in a high-resource setting in the United States.
The women of West Pokot Kenya and the neighboring regions with gynecologic conditions and without the means to pay for surgery were positively impacted by our trip. They were able to be screened for surgery and to undergo operations to improve symptoms from fibroids, large ovarian cysts, pelvic organ prolapse, and incontinence.
