image description

Help support PRONTO’s Guatemalan partner to secure a Saving Lives at Birth award!

We need your help! PRONTO International has partnered with the Epidemiological Research Center in Sexual and Reproductive Health in Guatemala City, Guatemala for a Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development grant! Together, we are finalists for a scale-up grant and project titled, “Que Vivan Las Madres: Scaling Up an Integrated Approach to Reduce Maternal and Perinatal Mortality in Northern Guatemala”

Here is how you can help us: As part of the Saving Lives at Birth Grants, there is a People’s Choice nomination for the public’s favorite project and we need your vote!

From the SLAB People’s Choice Nomination site:

A pool of over 400 applicants has been winnowed down to 53 finalists. We received applications from non-profit organizations, universities and university affiliates, and for-profit organizations submitting innovative solutions that cut across technology, service delivery, and demand. From July 29-31, the finalists will compete in the last stage of review at the Development XChange in Washington, DC.
Vote now for your favorite innovations! Between now and July 31st 11:00 am EST, review the 53 finalists’ innovations from Round 3 and vote for the most pioneering ones. The winner of the People’s Choice Award will be announced on July 31st.
• To vote, register/sign-in.
• Click on the star next to your favorite finalists.
• To undo your vote, click the “x”.
• Vote for as many finalists as you wish.

Here is a brief introduction of our project:

Guatemala has one of the highest national maternal mortality ratios in Latin America at 149 per 100,000 live births, and up to 260 per 100,000 in some northern departments. Only 31% of deliveries are attended by a skilled birth attendant. Since early 2004 Guatemala has invested heavily in building and updating northern clinics for 24 hour delivery care. It was expected that as access increased, rates of maternal and perinatal mortality would drop. But as of 2012 this had not occurred. To attack this difficult problem, we propose to scale up an already tested innovative strategy, combining technology, service delivery, and demand creation approaches. Our collaborative effort integrates: 1) a low cost, simulation-based training program (PRONTO) using a low-tech birth simulator (PartoPantsTM) to teach provider teams emergency management during childbirth, 2) a research-driven social marketing campaign encouraging women in the target communities to give birth in clinics rather than at home, and 3) professional midwife liaisons charged with connecting traditional birth attendants to the formal health care system. We expect that this effort will catalyze critical practice changes in maternity care, increase the proportion of births attended in clinics, improve maternal outcomes, and decrease perinatal death in indigenous Guatemalan communities. Our idea represents a creative, unconventional approach to improving childbirth outcomes as it combines several evidence-based strategies, including highly realistic emergency simulation training rarely used in low-resource settings, to address a seemingly intractable problem from multiple angles.

How to vote:
1. Follow this link http://savinglivesatbirth.net/innovation/2013/innovators/all
2. On the right side, click “Create new account”
3. Fill in the information (only your email is required) and submit
4. In the email you receive, follow the *second* link provided to use a one-time login
5. Create a password
6. Return to the original link (http://savinglivesatbirth.net/innovation/2013/innovators/all) and log in with your username (included in the email) and password
7. Vote by clicking the star next to the project from Epidemiological Research Center in Sexual and Reproductive Health entitled “Que Vivan Las Madres: Scaling Up an Integrated Approach to Reduce Maternal and Perinatal Mortality in Northern Guatemala”

We greatly appreciate your support! Please feel free to forward this information widely to individuals whom may have an interest in supporting our project.

Thank you!

Comments are closed.