Major drop in martenal deaths Putting hospital in limelimit

The Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) General Secretary Dagfinn Høybråten and Norwegian Ambassador to Tanzania, Tone Tinne led the deligation here recently for benchmark visit.

The hospital impliment Safer Birth Bundle of Care (SBBC) inorder to improve martenal and newborn care through innovative training solution and therapy product.

"The NCA is a proud partner of Haydom and look forward to seeing this place continue to thrive",Høybråten said.

Breifing visitors about the impact of the project, Dr. Paschal Mdoe, Haydom Lutheran Hospital Excutive Director explained that the project means every pregnant women who goes to hospital deliver safely.

"Martenal deaths has now declined from 11 to four women per year recorded last year", He said.

Dr. Mdoe added that, the 2021 the data shows that the general mortality rate at tge hospital was 7.4 percent, but last year the rate went down to 5.3 percent.

He said with the support received from NORAD, tgey have managed to siginificantly to cut down the number of deaths.

Prof. Babagana Zulum, the Health Commisioner in Borno state, Nigeria was among the guests who visited the hospital to learn how it managed to reduce the number of newborn and martenal deaths.

"We have witnesed how the SBBC reduces the number of martenal mortality, this is very big achievement" he said.

SBBC consists of innovative clinical and training tools for improved labour care and newborn resuscitation, intergrated with new strategies for continous quality improvement.

Tinne commended the hospital for the achievement, adding that this is significant because Tanzania and Norway have marked 60 years of diplomatic relation while the hospital has markef 70 years.

The Haydom Lutheran Hospotal is the faith based hospital, it provide acces to health care for more than 900,000 people in its catchment area, and more than 5.7 milion people in the greater reference area, the hospital has 420 beds capacity and 680 employee of diferent cadres.

The NCA and Haydom had a long partnership since 2003, In 2015, NCA became the Grant Manager for Norad funding to the hospital. Over the years, have worked together to strengthen organizational and institutional development and support to improve the quality

of health services.