Mother-Child Helpline +91 88848 64036
Closing gaps in care, training and awareness. BBN works with public health institutions, social change organisations and individuals to address service gaps, advance midwifery education and training, and to create awareness among the general public, doctors, nurses and hospitals on how obstetric care can be transformed through innovation.
This modular programme addresses gaps in quality and continuity of care by upskilling childbirth professionals and placing them into high-need healthcare facilities.
The need. There are serious issues and gaps in the quality and quantity of healthcare services for women during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. Women’s needs for education, continuity of care and individual counselling are simply not being met. Gaps in care and counselling result in higher infant mortality rates and health risks for both mother and baby. Primary issues include:
These issues all boil down to one primary obstacle: there is a dearth of competent, trained professionals who are able to provide respectful, reliable and evidence-based care.
Our aim is to give women better birth options where quality of care is paramount. The key to ensuring this is by building a large cadre of paraprofessionals to support women and newborns’ needs.
Bridging the Gap is a modular programme designed to build an ecosystem of competent childbirth professionals. The programme has two components: training and placement. By providing training in a specific skill set and placing trainees in a setting that needs support in that area, we successfully “bridge the gap” in care.
It is well documented that competent and compassionate healthcare professionals make a huge difference in the lives of their patients and their outcomes. One of the systemic changes desperately needed in India is a large cadre of paraprofessionals to support women and newborns’ needs during pregnancy, birth and postpartum.
In the case of birth, nurses who are supportive and trained in respectful application of evidence-based practices are vital in ensuring that all women have access to quality of care.
Through all of our work, we have seen first-hand that one thing is certain: upskilling saves lives. We focus on capacity building and upskilling medical professionals to supplement the current weaknesses in the quality of care that women receive. We run a yearly programme where we impart high-impact training to nursing students focused on enhancing care-giving and counselling skills.
Capacity building is a key step to combatting many issues that hospitals and prenatal and postnatal clinics face, such as chronic staff shortages and poor quality of care.
Our “Nurses Matter” training programme teaches students to provide evidence-based care that is woman-centric and sensitive to her needs, ensuring that she feels safe and supported during birth and postpartum. This programme is not only beneficial for women who will receive better care as a result of the training, but for the nurses themselves who are learning a vital and valuable skill set.
Nurses trained after four years. This is a great start, and we can do much more
Reduction in neonatal mortality risk when breastfeeding begins within the first hour of life
Women reached per week by our lactation support pilot in a municipal hospital
This programme addresses basic maternal and newborn health and hygiene to prevent and cure problems before they become serious.
Infant mortality in India is higher than average for South Asia. Issues faced by postpartum women include little or no continuity of care in the public health system; lack of access to counselling on hygiene, nutrition, vaccinations, newborn and infant care; and delayed recognition of danger signs in the new mother and/or baby.
Research has shown that the initiation of breastfeeding within the first hour of life leads to a 22% reduction in neonatal mortality risk, making it a simple yet critical intervention along with lactation counselling.
BBN provides support to a community of practice for new and budding birth professionals in the city, giving them a central platform to connect with parents, find educational opportunities, network professionally and seek mentoring to further their education and hands-on clinical skills.
In a pilot of our Lactation Support Program, a nurse from St. Philomena’s and certified Lactation Consultant reached around 40 women per week in a municipal hospital, giving them vital access to potentially life-saving information and guidance.
Women from lower socio-economic sectors in the surrounding areas of Bangalore need enhanced support in their childbearing years, but are not receiving it in public health facilities.
Outreach camps were set up in Hosahalli to welcome women from the surrounding areas to learn more about the gaps in care and support they experience and introduce them to BBN’s work. Additionally, women received free counselling and one-on-one consultation sessions with our expert facilitators. The main goals of this programme were to provide us with a situational analysis of women’s maternal health and newborn needs and issues as a way of determining the community’s needs, and to ensure that women are acquainted with key health information and are able to support each other with evidence-based information.
This programme was designed to make a measurable impact in the community by:
“Every Birth Matters”
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