Northern Uganda

H. E. A.R. T. Project (Health Education and Rapid Transportation) completed in October 2020.  

The purpose of this international service project was to reduce maternal and infant mortality by implementing strategies to avoid the underlying reasons for high rates of morbidity and mortality as determined by ground-level needs assessments.  Goals of this project included: 

1. Reduce the delay in which pregnant women chose to obtain maternity care/delivery services from a skilled healthcare facility.  
2. Reduce the delay in which people reach the proper level of care to meet the needs of the patient.  
3. Reduce the delay in receiving proper care at a Healthcare facility once a patient has arrived due to poor staff training or lack of proper equipment. 

This project also included: 

Training the locally accepted, yet unskilled,  traditional birth attendants to be referral agents to the health centers for prenatal care, delivery, and postnatal care.

Training already existing Village Health Teams and Traditional Birth Attendants to identify emergencies and be the first responders of their village to call the newly formed Ambulance System.  When called, the nearest e-Ranger motorcycle ambulance will pick up the pregnant mother and transport to the best facility for her condition. A maternity waiting home is available for mothers who can travel to the larger health center to give birth and now have a place to stay until labor begins. Health Workers were provided with updated tools, some as basic as stethoscopes to improve their day to day work.

Over the 18 months of the program, referrals to health centers for prenatal care and deliveries from these remote areas increased multiple times over exceeding the capacity of local health centers until Traditional Birth Attendants began escorting their mothers to nearby Health Centers in the next county.  The belief that mothers should receive professional maternal care was now important.