Rwanda launches ‘More Happy Birth Day’ Project to tackle maternal and child mortality

By Elias Hakizimana.

Rwanda Association of Midwives (RAM) in partnership with The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) have inaugurated a project to boost maternal, new-born and child health in Rwanda.

Dubbed ‘More Happy Birth Day’, the project aims to improve the quality of maternal and new-born health care by strengthening midwives’ competencies with the use of the Helping Mothers Survive (HMS) and Helping Babies Survive (HBS).

The project builds on the success of the 10,000 Happy Birthdays project, implemented in Zambia and Malawi from 2014-2016, and the 50,000 Happy Birthdays project implemented in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania from 2018-2020. These projects contributed to training more than 25,000 healthcare providers, improved quality of care and strengthened professional Midwives’ Associations.

A midwife attends to a new born baby. 

In 1995, Rwanda had only 5 midwives, today, there are over 2,142 midwives qualified and practicing midwifery profession.

The More Happy Birth day virtual launch took place online on Tuesday September, 7, 2021, bringing together various RAM partners including ICM Chief Executive, Dr. Sally Pairman, ICM Midwife Advisors Dr Florence West, ICM Project Coordinator for More Happy Birth day Martha Bokosi, Rwanda Ministry of Health & Rwanda Biomedical Center ( RBC) representative , Dr Bikorimana Ferdinarnd ,  Latter Day Saints Charities Representative, Maternity Foundation representative ,  American Academy of Paediatrics representative Dr Micheal Visick , Distinguished NGO Partners ,Hospital Director Generals, Higher Teaching Institutions representatives, Rwanda Association of Midwives President, Obstetricians & Gynaecologist Association representatives, Paediatrician Association representatives, Registered midwives and nurses, and other stakeholders.

ICM Chief Executive, Dr. Sally Pairman launched this phase of the project by acknowledging the importance of cross-sectorial partnerships in ending maternal and new-born morbidity and mortality.

“With support from Ministries of Health representing a core component of the More Happy Birthdays project, a stronger Midwives’ Association in Rwanda will be able to support the ongoing professional development of the midwifery profession. A Happy Birthday is not only measured by lives saved, but also by ensuring a safe arrival of the new-born(s) into the world, a mother that is has a high level of satisfaction with the childbirth experience, characterised by respectful and dignified maternity care.” Dr Sally noted. 

The Launch marks the continuation of collaborative project between ICM, LDSC and RAM and the introduction of Maternity Foundation, the creator of the Safe Delivery Application. The Safe Delivery Application is a proven digital health solution that provides midwives with direct and instant access to evidence-based and up-to-date clinical guidelines (including and beyond the HMS-HBS content) on Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care.

Speaking amid the project launch, Josephine Murekezi, the President of the Rwanda Association of Midwives said that Rwanda is lucky and happy to benefit from this project in delivering improved quality of care through training the midwives and other health workers by enhancing stakeholder collaboration.

“We have managed to train midwives to ensure that mothers deliver in a safe environment, we are lucky that our partners gave us possible equipment and we managed to take preventive measures, we have learnt a lot to manage our finances and we have been supported to have efficient finance system in place,” she said.

“This project comes after two previous ones, including one of 2014-2016 that targeted 10,000 HBD in Zambia and Malawi to help 10,000 mothers have safe delivery, in 2018-2020; and another one that targeted 50,000 mothers to have safe delivery in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania. Through this newly inaugurated project, we target to help many mothers have safe delivery in the period of eight months,” said Angelique Uwineza, a midwife and Project Manager of More Happy Birthday project in Rwanda.

She recognized the efforts that will be gained from different partners in implementation of this project including the University of Rwanda, UNFPA, Intra Health Ingobyi Activity and Barame- Enabel project.

Dr Oliva Bazirete, a registered midwife and Assistant lecturer at the University of Rwanda’s College of Medicine and Health Sciences who is also the-in-charge of  Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) of the More Happy Birth Day project said that the new project will use offline applications to train midwives in reducing maternal , new-born and child morbidity & mortality.

“Trainees will use Safe Delivery Application to learn different lessons; internet will only be used once while installing the application in mobile phones, we will also use the Koobo –Collect tool to give us the image of how learners are performing.” Bazirete said.

The project will be implemented in 10 hospitals, 95 health centers and 7 teaching institutions. It will reach out 1,500 champions in total after its completion in 8 months from August 15^th, 2021 until April 4^th, 2022.