Seeking Better Outcomes for Mothers and Babies
By The Carter CenterMay 10, 2019
Through its Public Health Training Initiatives in Nigeria and Sudan, The Carter Center helps educational institutions improve the way they prepare health workers to serve the public. In Nigeria, the initiative supports one institution in each of six states.
Director Kenneth Korve, who leads the initiative from the Carter Center’s office in Jos, Plateau state, explains through a series of questions and answers.
Q: Why did The Carter Center and the Nigeria Federal Ministry of Health create the Nigeria Public Health Training Initiative?
A: Developing countries generally have challenges in the area of health, particularly as it pertains to
maternal, infant, and child needs, and Nigeria is not an exception. Nigeria’s minister of health attended a conference in 2012 on whether a successful Carter Center-led public health training program in Ethiopia could be replicated elsewhere. The minister liked the idea because this approach could have a nearly immediate impact.
Q: Why is it important to empower frontline health workers such as nurses and midwives?
A: These are the health workers who are the closest to the community and deal directly with the people, so it’s essential for us to work with them. We have community extension workers, who are produced by the colleges of health technology, and we have nurses and midwives, who learn at schools of nursing and midwifery. We would like to work with many more, but there are financial constraints.
Q: What sorts of equipment and materials does the initiative deliver to these institutions?
A: In the first phase (early 2018), we procured furniture, computers, laboratory equipment, consumables such as reagents, plus accessories that are used in the classroom skill labs. In mid-2019 we will procure and deliver a second round of such materials.
Q: Why is it important to empower frontline health workers such as nurses and midwives?
A: These are the health workers who are the closest to the community and deal directly with the people, so it’s essential for us to work with them. We have community extension workers, who are produced by the colleges of health technology, and we have nurses and midwives, who learn at schools of nursing and midwifery. We would like to work with many more, but there are financial constraints.
Q: What sorts of equipment and materials does the initiative deliver to these institutions?
A: In the first phase (early 2018), we procured furniture, computers, laboratory equipment, consumables such as reagents, plus accessories that are used in the classroom skill labs. In mid-2019 we will procure and deliver a second round of such materials.
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