Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Programs

Saving Newborn Lives in Kenya

last updated Jul 27, 2012

Overview

Implementing organization: 
Global Health Partnerships (GHP)
Implementation Partner(s): 
GHP and the Kenya Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation
Legal Status: 
Public-private partnership
Year Launched: 
2011
Stage: 
Pilot/startup stage
Income Level of Target Population: 
Bottom 20%

Funding

Primary Source of Funding: 
Donor
Additional Source(s) of Funding: 
Government
Funders: 
GHP, University of New Mexico

Scale

Personnel Employed: 
10-49
Number of Clients Served: 
700/year
Summary: 

This project trains village community health workers (CHWs) in Kenya to recognize signs of illness in newborn infants during their first week of life, so that life-saving treatment can be given. Newborn home visits by CHWs can save lives in poverty-stricken areas where health care is not readily available and the death rate of newborns is very high.

Program goals/rationale: 

In Kenya and other African countries, many newborn infants die from preventable causes, usually infections. Most children are born at home with no medical assistance. In this setting of extreme poverty and lack of health care access, the newborn infants receive little or no care after birth, even when illness strikes. An infection or other illness can rapidly become very serious, even fatal, unless treatment is started quickly. Mothers need local help if these deaths are to be prevented.

Training local village CHWs increases the local capacity for care of newborns, providing a long-lasting solution to the lack of access to medical care in impoverished African settings. Newborn lives can be saved with this proven and inexpensive approach.

Key program components: 

Community health workers (CHWs) live in the villages and know their neighbors, speak their language, and share their culture. GHP has provided training for a group of CHWs so that they are able to identify illness early, and educate the mothers about prevention of illness. The CHWs serve about 100 villages in Yatta District. They visit the home of each newborn 3 times during the first week of life, and assist those with signs of illness to get to a clinic or hospital for treatment. The cost of the 3 newborn visits is $7.50 (USD) per child.

This project has the potential to reach about 1,000 newborn infants in the target region of rural Kenya each year. Given the mortality rate for young infants in Kenya, 31 of these 1,000 infants will be expected to die without this type of program.

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A community health worker home visitation project to prevent neonatal deaths in Kenya.doc43 KB
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