Helping Babies Breathe

Our side project while at KCMC was to do some teaching on neonatal resuscitation.  We both had just come from a month on the NICU and NRP re-certification so we felt more comfortable with this.  But we used a different curriculum designed for low-resource settings, called Helping Babies Breathe.  The program emphasizes the importance of establishing breathing in the first "golden" minute of life, and teaches important skills for assessing & assisting babies in distress.

We see a lot of children with cerebral palsy from birth asphyxia here, so there is clearly a need.  The Helping Babies breathe program has been taught at KCMC in the past, and studies have even been published in Tanzania showing the decrease in neonatal mortality as a result.  But the reality is that there aren't always enough masks available, or people who feel comfortable using them.  After many visits to the obstetrics department we were able to arrange a 1 hour teaching session with the nurses and nursing students.  A longer course would have been ideal, but we did manage to hit on the important points.  Everyone got to practice on our simulation baby, Neo Natalie, and we were able to teach good technique for bag-mask ventilation.  They seemed most excited to get the extra bag-masks we'd brought along, which I hope will get a lot of use here at KCMC.