Training traditional birth attendants on the use of misoprostol and a blood measurement tool to prevent postpartum haemorrhage: lessons learnt from Bangladesh.

A consensus emerged in the late 1990s among leaders in global maternal health that traditional birth attendants (TBAs) should no longer be trained in delivery skills and should instead be trained as promoters of facility-based care. Many TBAs continue to be trained in places where home deliveries are the norm and the potential impacts of this training are important to understand. The primary objective of this study was to gain a more nuanced understanding of the full impact of training TBAs to use misoprostol and a blood measurement tool (mat) for the prevention of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) at home deliveries through the perspective of those involved in the project. This qualitative study, conducted between July 2009 and July 2010 in Bangladesh, was nested within larger operations research, testing the feasibility and acceptability of scaling up community-based provision of misoprostol and a blood measurement tool for prevention of PPH. A total of 87 in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted with TBAs, community health workers (CHWs), managers, and government-employed family welfare visitors (FWVs) at three time points during the study. Computer-assisted thematic data analysis was conducted using ATLAS.ti (version 5.2). Four primary themes emerged during the data analysis, which all highlight changes that occurred following the training. The first theme describes the perceived direct changes linked to the two new interventions. The following three themes describe the indirect changes that interviewees perceived: strengthened linkages between TBAs and the formal healthcare system; strengthened linkages between TBAs and the communities they serve; and improved quality of services/service utilization. The data indicate that training TBAs and CHW supervisors resulted in perceived broader and more nuanced changes than simply improvements in TBAs' knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Acknowledgeing TBAs' important role in the community and in home deliveries and integrating them into the formal healthcare system has the potential to result in changes similar to those seen in this study.

New hope: community-based misoprostol use to prevent postpartum haemorrhage.

The wide gap in maternal mortality ratios worldwide indicates major inequities in the levels of risk women face during pregnancy. Two priority strategies have emerged among safe motherhood advocates: increasing the quality of emergency obstetric care facilities and deploying skilled birth attendants. The training of traditional birth attendants, a strategy employed in the 1970s and 1980s, is no longer considered a best practice. However, inadequate access to emergency obstetric care and skilled birth attendants means women living in remote areas continue to die in large numbers from preventable maternal causes. This paper outlines an intervention to address the leading direct cause of maternal mortality, postpartum haemorrhage. The potential for saving maternal lives might increase if community-based birth attendants, women themselves, or other community members could be trained to use misoprostol to prevent postpartum haemorrhage. The growing body of evidence regarding the safety and efficacy of misoprostol for this indication raises the question: if achievement of the fifth Millennium Development Goal is truly a priority, why can policy makers and women's health advocates not see that misoprostol distribution at the community level might have life-saving benefits that outweigh risks?

Training traditional birth attendants to use misoprostol and an absorbent delivery mat in home births.

A 50-fold disparity in maternal mortality exists between high- and low-income countries, and in most contexts, the single most common cause of maternal death is postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). In Bangladesh, as in many other low-income countries, the majority of deliveries are conducted at home by traditional birth attendants (TBAs) or family members. In the absence of skilled birth attendants, training TBAs in the use of misoprostol and an absorbent delivery mat to measure postpartum blood loss may strengthen the ability of TBAs to manage PPH. These complementary interventions were tested in operations research among 77,337 home births in rural Bangladesh. The purpose of this study was to evaluate TBAs' knowledge acquisition, knowledge retention, and changes in attitudes and practices related to PPH management in home births after undergoing training on the use of misoprostol and the blood collection delivery mat. We conclude that the training was highly effective and that the two interventions were safely and correctly used by TBAs at home births. Data on TBA practices indicate adherence to protocol, and 18 months after the interventions were implemented, TBA knowledge retention remained high. This program strengthens the case for community-based use of misoprostol and warrants consideration of this intervention as a potential model for scale-up in settings where complete coverage of skilled birth attendants (SBAs) remains a distant goal.

Where there are (few) skilled birth attendants.

Recent efforts to reduce maternal mortality in developing countries have focused primarily on two long-term aims: training and deploying skilled birth attendants and upgrading emergency obstetric care facilities. Given the future population-level benefits, strengthening of health systems makes excellent strategic sense but it does not address the immediate safe-delivery needs of the estimated 45 million women who are likely to deliver at home, without a skilled birth attendant. There are currently 28 countries from four major regions in which fewer than half of all births are attended by skilled birth attendants. Sixty-nine percent of maternal deaths in these four regions can be attributed to these 28 countries, despite the fact that these countries only constitute 34% of the total population in these regions. Trends documenting the change in the proportion of births accompanied by a skilled attendant in these 28 countries over the last 15-20 years offer no indication that adequate change is imminent. To rapidly reduce maternal mortality in regions where births in the home without skilled birth attendants are common, governments and community-based organizations could implement a cost-effective, complementary strategy involving health workers who are likely to be present when births in the home take place. Training community-based birth attendants in primary and secondary prevention technologies (e.g. misoprostol, family planning, measurement of blood loss, and postpartum care) will increase the chance that women in the lowest economic quintiles will also benefit from global safe motherhood efforts.

Evaluation of a traditional birth attendant training programme in Bangladesh.

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: the 1997 Safe Motherhood Initiative effectively eliminated support for training traditional birth attendants (TBAs) in safe childbirth. Despite this, TBAs are still active in many countries such as Bangladesh, where 88% of deliveries occur at home. Renewed interest in community-based approaches and the urgent need to improve birth care has necessitated a re-examination of how provider training should be conducted and evaluated. OBJECTIVE: to demonstrate how a simple evaluation tool can provide a quantitative measure of knowledge acquisition and intended behaviour following a TBA training program. DESIGN: background data were collected from 45 TBAs attending two separate training sessions conducted by Bangladeshi non-governmental organization (NGO) Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK). A semi-structured survey was conducted before and after each training session to assess the TBAs' knowledge and reported practices related to home-based management of childbirth. SETTING: two training sessions conducted in Vatshala and Sreepur in rural Bangladesh. PARTICIPANTS: 45 active TBAs were recruited for this training evaluation. FINDINGS: there were significant improvements following the training sessions regarding how TBAs reported they would: (a) measure blood loss, (b) handle an apneic newborn, (c) refer women with convulsions and (d) refer women who are bleeding heavily. A greater degree of improvement, and higher scores overall, were observed among TBAs with no prior training and with less birth experience. KEY CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTICE: as the Safe Motherhood community strives to improve safe childbirth care, the quality of care in pregnancy and childbirth for women who rely on less-skilled providers should not be ignored. These communities need assistance from governments and NGOs to help improve the knowledge and skill levels of the providers upon which they depend. Gonoshasthaya Kendra's extensive efforts to train and involve TBAs, with the aim of improving the quality of care provided to Bangladeshi women, is a good example of how to effectively integrate TBAs into safe motherhood efforts in resource-poor settings. The evaluation methodology described in this paper demonstrates how trainees' prior experiences and beliefs may affect knowledge acquisition, and highlights the need for more attention to course content and pedagogic style.

Maternal mortality in developing countries: challenges in scaling-up priority interventions.

Although maternal mortality is a significant global health issue, achievements in mortality decline to date have been inadequate. A review of the interventions targeted at maternal mortality reduction demonstrates that most developing countries face tremendous challenges in the implementation of these interventions, including the availability of unreliable data and the shortage in human and financial resources, as well as limited political commitment. Examples from developing countries, such as Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Honduras, demonstrate that maternal mortality will decline when appropriate strategies are in place. Such achievable strategies need to include redoubled commitments on the part of local, national and global political bodies, concrete investments in high-yield and cost-effective interventions and the delegation of some clinical tasks from higher-level healthcare providers to mid- or lower-level healthcare providers, as well as improved health-management information systems.