Appropriate maternal health care can mean the difference between life and death for a pregnant woman. Ensuring that women everywhere have access to such care could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year. With skilled care that is quickly accessible, common complications such as pre-eclampsia or a malaria infection, as well as serious conditions like obstructed labor, can be safely managed. St. Mary’s ADI Community Health Center is working to make high-quality essential and emergency obstetric care available in places where women and families need it most. We do this by:
- Improving providers’ clinical skills for routine prenatal care
- Ensuring that lifesaving post abortion care is available
- Upgrading facilities in consultation with local partners
- Increasing the availability and quality of emergency obstetric services, including
- management of obstructed labor
- prevention and management of postpartum hemorrhage
- Treating and preventing obstetric fistula
- Mobilizing communities to recognize danger signs and to prepare emergency transport of pregnant women to health facilities
- Promoting increased availability of a low-cost treatment for pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality worldwide