The application "The Safe Delivery" was presented in Denmark, a mobile education tool that has the potential to save the lives of mothers and newborns during pregnancy and childbirth in African countries.
Developed by the Danish Maternity Foundation in collaboration with researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Southern Denmark, the app can significantly enhance the ability of birth attendants to save lives, according to a recent study.
Every year, 289,000 women and more than five million newborns die as a result of complications during pregnancy or childbirth. 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. However, the vast majority of these deaths could be prevented if these women had the support of trained personnel during childbirth.
The Safe Delivery app builds on the rapid spread of mobile telephony in Africa, where there are already more than 600 million mobile phone users. Mobile technology paves the way for innovative solutions to global health problems that are otherwise difficult to address due to long geographical distances (e.g. in rural areas) and lack of education.
Safe Delivery includes animated videos that provide guidance for healthcare professionals in developing countries on how to deal with complications during childbirth, such as if the mother is bleeding after giving birth or the newborn is not breathing. The videos are available in both English and local languages, and can also be used by people with limited language skills.
The app has been undergoing a clinical trial in Ethiopia. The results of the study will be published at the end of 2015, but the data confirms that the app can significantly increase the ability of healthcare professionals to prevent the effects of life-threatening complications.
The ability of health professionals to deal with cases of postpartum hemorrhage, as well as to resuscitate newborns, more than doubled after 12 months of using the application. The greatest improvement in skills was seen among health professionals in rural areas, where there was the greatest need for training. Importantly, skills continued to improve throughout the 12 months, indicating that the application is able to maintain and continuously improve the level of knowledge.
The final version of the app will be available free of charge to health agencies and NGOs in developing countries. It will be extensively tested and evaluated in collaboration with these agencies, after its launch, in selected regions of Africa, with the aim of collecting data and better exploiting the results and its use. So far, agencies such as the Danish Red Cross and Marie Stopes International have decided to include the app in their programs in Guinea and Tanzania, respectively.
Source: pestaola.gr
