HOW TO HELP
Everyday 1000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth. They die from complications that are often preventable with basic knowledge and skills. The key is knowledge, early detection, family support, and access to care. In order to change the deathly reality of maternal health in developing countries action needs to be taken.This project supports the work of ONE HEART WORLD-WIDE, a non-profit organisation working in the Baglung and Dolpa districts of Nepal to educate, train and provide equipment to the women of the remote Nepalese Himalaya.
One Heart World-Wide’s mission is to save the lives of women and infants in need, one birth at the time.
Program history:
Our life-saving skills programs were initially established in the late 1990’s in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. During our time in Tibet, One Heart World-Wide experienced a number of significant successes in collaboration with the Lhasa Prefecture Health Bureau and the Women’s Federation. Over the last ten years, we were able to decrease unattended home births from 85% to 20%, mostly by ensuring the presence of a skilled attendant at delivery. In 2008, in the two counties where One Heart World-Wide was working, the Lhasa Prefecture Health Bureau reported no maternal deaths and newborn death rates dropped from 10% to 3% since the start of the One Heart World-Wide project.Our Model:
Based on our experience, One Heart World-Wide developed an effective, replicable and sustainable model to reduce preventable deaths related to pregnancy and delivery among vulnerable rural populations. Simply put, we work with local communities and local health providers to develop a culturally appropriate Network of Safety around mothers and infants, by raising awareness, teaching good practices, and distributing essential supplies to ensure that mothers and infants survive delivery and the first months of life. The Network of Safety is innovative in that it is tailored to the local cultural context, that it puts the mother first and that our interventions are aimed simultaneously at several different levels to insure appropriate continuity of care for the mothers and infants.The demonstrated success of our model has lead us to expand our operations to other sites in need including the Baglung and Dolpo Districts in Western Nepal, and the Copper Canyon in the State of Chihuahua, Mexico.
One Heart World-Wide actively seeks both volunteers and donations to support their programs. To find out more information please visit www.oneheartworld-wide.org Or watch the following videos regarding their programs both in Nepal and Mexico.