TSF works towards a safer motherhood in Myanmar

In isolated areas of Myanmar, there is a lack of qualified maternity workers able to provide dependable birthing practices for future mothers. This deficiency is often dangerous for pregnant women and can cause complications for both mother and child during the birthing process. The auxiliary midwives require support from institutional workers and the Myanmar government so as to be able to carry out this essential practice.

Sensitive to the needs of improved maternal health and the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, Télécoms Sans Frontières, in collaboration with PU-AMI (Première Urgence – Aide Médicale Internationale), is implementing a specially tailored mHealth hardware/software solution to resolve two of the biggest issues hindering the day-to-day work of auxiliary midwives:

• lack of day-to-day support: auxiliary midwives have no records or tools on which they can rely to carry out their daily work amongst pregnant women and young children;

• unreliable data collection that hinders follow-up and monitoring: until present, there has been no viable data collection system that provides a structured medical records, monitoring and support mechanisms to auxiliary midwives.

TSF has developed a mobile application to help guide auxiliary midwives through the course of antenatal consultations. The data is gathered using smartphones and is sent through the mobile telecommunications network to a data server where all this essential information will be centralised.

This system will allow structured, precise and accurate data reports to be produced and analysed by healthcare workers meaning that improved care will be brought to the mothers who need it most.

Now that the application is in place, TSF is starting a series of training sessions and refresher courses, of which the first was held at the end of June. These courses will group together a total of 40 auxiliary midwives and state-employed midwives in the aim of mastering the application and being able to apply these practical skills in the field.

The application treats each case separately, allowing the user to create profiles for every patient. Auxiliary midwives are then guided through various questions concerning their patients’ pregnancy and any illnesses they may encounter, the result being a diagnosis or medical recommendations.

This project aims to increase the capacities of local auxiliary midwives by facilitating the monitoring of the pregnancy and diagnosis of diseases such as malaria which commonly threaten both mother and child in Myanmar.

TSF’s engineer on the ground in Myanmar has shared his feelings with us:

“The poor infrastructures are obvious challenges. Electricity is scarce; communication networks are unreliable at best. Our diagnostic application has been well received by both the official representatives and the users. Less than two weeks after the initial deployment, consultation data are already flowing to the central server, building the patient files and feeding our monitoring and evaluations tools.There is still a lot of work to be done before there will be an effective health system for everybody here in Myanmar. There are several constraints but no lack of good will and innovative initiatives to improve the situation. In a country that has been ravaged by inter-ethnic conflict for decades the simple fact that we can now send and receive computerised medical files is a small victory in itself.”