The World Health Organization included the work of Global Strategies in a recent report on newborn care in low- and middle-income countries. The report, entitled Roadmap on human resource strategies to improve newborn care in health facilities in low- and middle-income countries, describes the role of local newborn care health providers in reducing newborn mortality and how health ministries and organizations are responding to the challenge of growing the local health workforce. The report listed Global Strategies as one of only three organizations using point-of-care software to help frontline healthcare workers deliver high quality newborn care.
“Our approach is born out of our field experience,“ says Global Strategies Medical Director Dr. Joshua Bress. “The goal is to rapidly grow the number of healthcare providers capable and confident in delivering the type of newborn care we associate with specialists. Our work uses software, the NoviGuide, to help people who have already gone through medical training become confident in newborn care without having to leave their clinical posts, where they are so desperately needed, for lengthy and expensive training programs.”
The NoviGuide’s neonatal application is currently in use in Tororo District Uganda under the direction of Principal Investigator Dr. Mary Muhindo. Nurses and midwives, primarily trained in the care of pregnant women and deliveries, use the NoviGuide as a guide in the evaluation and treatment of newborns. Early data shows a strong demand for tools that can help once the baby is born; after only three months with the latest version of the software, frontline Ugandan healthcare providers have already entered over 600 cases into the NoviGuide.
For the full report, with Global Strategies inclusion on page 40:
