Posted on: Sat 01-07-2017

Every year, approximately 300,000 mothers and 2.7 million newborns die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Most of these lives could be prevented If they had received care from educated, regulated and skilled midwives working in an enabling health system environment. Developing and maintaining skills to manage unanticipated problems at the time of birth is vital.

ICM is delighted to announce a call for proposals to National Midwives Associations interested in scaling up the simulation-based Helping Babies Survive (HBS) and Helping Mothers Survive (HMSBAB) training modules in a phase II of the 10,000 Happy Birthday Project.

Evaluation of Phase 1 of the Project in Malawi and Zambia has demonstrated its effectiveness. ICM believes it is vital to scale up the implementation of the HMS-BAB and HMS programs in new countries taking the 10,000 Happy Birthdays to the next level to save more lives. Leveraging the best practice identified in Malawi and Zambia, and implementation of the training modules in other countries, the aim is to train, equip and support 50,000 more midwives and others with these skills. ICM wants to be able to report on 50,000 Happy Birthdays, or more, at the 32nd ICM Triennial Congress 2020 in Bali.

The 10,000 Happy Birthday program was launched by ICM in 2004 at the ICM 30th Triennial Congress in Prague as a collaboration between Laerdal Global Health and ICM to introduce and scale up of the Helping Babies Breathe and Helping Mothers Survive programs in two pilot countries.

The goal was to train, equip and support 10,000 midwives so that they could ensure 10,000 more Happy Birthdays and to strengthen midwifery in these countries.  Since then, these programs have been implemented to full national coverage by Association of Malawi Midwives (AMAMI) in Malawi and Midwives Association of Zambia (MAZ) in Zambia and the midwifery associations are stronger now than ever.

More information available on http://www.laerdalglobalhealth.com/10000happybirthdays

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