U.S. AMBASSADOR LEARNS ABOUT SUCCESSFUL BIRTHING AND INFANT CARE EXPERIENCE AT SIMFEROPOL MATERNITY #2

Simferopol - United States Ambassador in Ukraine, William B. Taylor visited Simferopol Maternity #2 on as a part of his working visit to Simferopol, January 22. During the visit, Ambassador Taylor was briefed about the successful implementation of effective evidence-based perinatal technologies and practices implemented by USAID's Mother and Infant Health Project. He also toured individual delivery rooms and met with in-patient postpartum mothers and babies, and their relatives. Medical staff explained new World Health Organization birth practices of perinatal care the USAID project is implementing. These include: family deliveries, "warm chain" practices, the use of the partogram, rooming-in and free visits of relatives in post-partum department.

USAID's MIHP began working in Simferopol Maternity Hospital #2 in August 2003. During the period of its collaboration with MIHP, the Simferopol Maternity #2 facility attained considerable success in the implementation of modern perinatal practices in line with WHO guidelines, and thus reduced unnecessary medical interventions during delivery. Care standards have increased dramatically because of MIHP's efforts. (The use of general anesthesia, for example, dropped from 9 percent in 2004 to 0.9 percent in 2008; episiotomies dropped from 22 percent in 2004 to 1.5 percent in 2008; and companion deliveries (e.g., the presence of a partner, relative or other companion during delivery) increased from 17 percent in 2004 to 61 percent at the end of 2008.

Effective implementation of warm chain technology, in which a baby is kept warm through either the mother's body heat or by covering the infant with warm clothing, helped to reduce hypothermia from 69 percent in 2004 to 1 percent in 2008. Eight individual delivery rooms were established for companion deliveries.

Simferopol Maternity #2 has now achieved a rate of 89 percent of normal deliveries, compared to 32 percent in 2004. It has also reduced the rate of mother-to-child HIV transmission to less than 2 percent due to elective Caesarean sections for HIV-positive women. Health care personnel in the maternity wards have become national and international trainers on effective perinatal care, and are central to the dissemination of evidence-based perinatal practices throughout Crimea.

USAID's four-year Mother and Infant Health Project (MIHP) is currently implemented in 16 regions - Donetsk, Lutsk, Lviv, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr, Poltava, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizzia, Kharkiv, Uzhgorod, Chernivtsi, Rivne, Odesa, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv, and in the Autonomous Republic of Crimean and Kyiv municipality. It aims to improve the reproductive health conditions of Ukrainian women by introduction of effective perinatal technologies. The project is implemented by John Snow, Inc. (JSI).

United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) assistance focuses on the following areas: Economic Growth, Democracy and Governance, Health and Social Sector. Since 1992, USAID has provided $1.6 billion worth of technical and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine to further the processes of democratic development, economic restructuring and social sector reform in the region. For additional information about this and other USAID programs in Ukraine, please call USAID's Development Outreach and Communication Office, at tel. (044) 492-7101 or visit the USAID website.