Globally, over two million women live with obstetric fistula with the majority of the cases
being from Africa. In low-resource settings such as Zambia, obstetric fistula (OF) is a visible indicato
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gaps in maternal health care resulting in failure to provide adequate, accessible and quality maternal health
care, including family planning, skilled birth attendance, basic and emergency obstetric and neonatal care,
and affordable treatment of fistula. OF is preventable and treatable, and no woman in Zambia should continue to endure the condition. It is therefore necessary that Zambia intensifies national scale up of OF management centers including
community based interventions, train more surgeons and other health workers to provide quality and
affordable care closer to the women who are silently suffering from obstetric fistula.
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Fistula Care's implementing partner in Ethiopia, IntraHealth, has developed materials to train health workers on obstetric fistula prevention, iden
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tification, and pre-repair care. The course contains a participant handbook (PDF, 604 KB), a facilitator manual (PDF, 1.3 MB), ten modules, a variety of visual aids, and supplementary handouts
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Fistula Care's implementing partner in Ethiopia, IntraHealth, has developed materials to train health workers on obstetric fistula prevention, iden
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tification, and pre-repair care. The course contains a participant handbook (PDF, 604 KB), a facilitator manual (PDF, 1.3 MB), ten modules, a variety of visual aids, and supplementary handouts
more
The standards of care cover the routine care and management of complications occurring for women and their babies during labour, childbirth and the early postnatal period, including those of small b
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abies during the first week of life. They define priorities for improving the quality of maternal and newborn care for use by planners, managers and health care providers
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A Supplement to the obstetrical fistula counseling curriculum
WHO has issued a new recommendation on the length of bladder catheterization following surgical repair of a simple obstetric urinary fistula. Currently the length of catheterization is not standard and ranges from 5 to 42 days. The new guidance reco
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mmends a 7–10 day period of bladder catheterization to allow complete healing. Longer periods of catheterization can be inconvenient for the woman, her family and care providers as it is associated with more discomfort and inconvenience. It also increases the risk of infection and erosion related to catheterization; requires more intensive nursing care and costs more per patient.
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The guidelines address timing, number and place of postnatal contacts, and content of postnatal care for all mothers and babies during the six weeks after birth. The primary audience for these guidelines is health professionals who are responsible f
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or providing postnatal care to women and newborns, primarily in areas where resources are limited. The guidelines are also expected to be used by policy-makers and managers of maternal and child health programmes, health facilities, and teaching institutions to set up and maintain maternity and newborn care services.
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This manual will aid in building the capacity of nurses with clinical knowledge of the unique needs, complex health problems, common geriatric syndromes, and principles of care of older people. It will also enable them to acquire the skills necessar
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y to perform an in-depth multidimensional geriatric assessment. This manual will go a long way in establishing effective geriatric care services and improving the awareness of nurses regarding the various aspects of geriatric care in the WHO South-East Asia Region.
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There is a crucial need to initiate and sustain fistula programs that increase access and strengthen the capacity of the health care system to provide high quality services for repair and
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care of women living with female genital fistula. Therefore, it is important to pay particular attention to the quality of training, and to proactively determine how this training fits into the health care system. Furthermore, the quality of training is improved by committing adequate resources to ensure competent trainers, able to train and follow-up their trainees. Women with genital fistulae, their families and the community need to have confidence in the health care system. It is therefore necessary to have pro-active discussions about the quality of training with relevant stakeholders. These fistula training guidelines and standards go towards harmonizing the training approach and to improving the quality of training and hence, service delivery.
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Effective implementation of WHO PEN, combined with other very cost effective population-wide interventions, will help even resource constrained settings to attain the global voluntary targets related to reduction of premature mortality and preventionof heart attacks and strokes.
A two-week mission was conducted by WASH and quality UHC technical experts from WHO headquarters and supported by the WHO Ethiopia Country Office (WASH and health systems teams) in July 2016, to understand how change in WASH services and quality improvements have been implemented in Ethiopia at nati
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onal, sub-national and facility levels; to document existing activities; and through the “joint lens” of quality UHC and WASH, to identify and seek to address key bottlenecks in specific areas including leadership, policy/financing, monitoring and evaluation, evidence application and facility improvements. Ethiopia has implemented a number of innovative and successful interventions.
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Primary Care: The Community Health System
Fistula Services Facilitative Supervision and Medical Monitoring for Training Sites and Training Follow- up
This checklist facilitates the supervision and monitoring of training activities. Forms include: Facility Information; Training Follow Up fo
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r Fistula Surgery and Peri-operative Care; Training Follow Up for Fistula Counselors; Additional Supervision/Monitoring for a Fistula Training Site; and Summary Notes and Recommendations from the Supervision and Monitoring Visit
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