JHPIEGO, an
international health organization at The Johns Hopkins
University, has received a five-year award of $75 million
from the U.S. Agency for International Development to lead
ACCESS, a program to save the lives of mothers and newborns
in developing nations.
A 31-year-old organization dedicated to improving
health care for women and families, JHPIEGO builds capacity
in developing countries by training and supporting local
health care providers, including doctors, nurses, midwives
and health educators, in areas where few if any providers
currently practice.
JHPIEGO works throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle
East, Latin America and Europe. Its partners in the ACCESS
program are Save the Children, the American College of
Nurse-Midwives, the Futures Group, the Academy for
Educational Development and Interchurch Medical
Assistance.
"JHPIEGO and our partners are proud to lead this
country's flagship program to provide improved care for
women and children in developing countries," said Leslie D.
Mancuso, chief executive officer of JHPIEGO. "We will
develop the health infrastructure that gives critical
support to women and families. We will foster the adoption
of proven practices that are the best hope for a healthy
future. Through ACCESS, we can make sure that women give
birth in clean and safe surroundings, with a trained birth
provider and the support of their community, so that
mothers and newborns, especially in the critical first days
of life, survive and thrive."
Each year, more than 500,000 women die in childbirth,
Mancuso said.
ACCESS — providing access to clinical and
community maternal, neonatal and women's health services
— is a follow-on program to JHPIEGO's Maternal and
Neonatal Health Program, which also was funded by USAID.
The MNH Program has increased survival rates of mothers and
newborns in 18 countries since its inception in 1998.
Through MNH, JHPIEGO and its partners have developed global
guidelines, best practices and evidence-based treatments;
educated in-country experts who can practice, teach and
advocate for communities, patients and families; mobilized
communities to demand more and better-quality health care;
and introduced infection prevention techniques and a
rigorous quality improvement process instituted at local
hospitals and clinics.
ACCESS represents wider implementation of the best
practices and programs piloted through MNH: interventions
for birth preparation and safe delivery, integrating care
for mothers and newborns, and identifying and training
skilled birth attendants. To ensure improved outcomes,
ACCESS will scale up proven best practices in essential
maternal and newborn care such as the prevention of malaria
in pregnancy and the reduction of bleeding in childbirth or
postpartum hemorrhage, the leading cause of maternal death
worldwide. The new program's approach to integrating
maternal and newborn care is not only the best way to
ensure that mother and baby both receive essential health
and nutrition services, Mancuso said, but it is also the
most economical way to deliver services.
In addition, the program will build on community
mobilization efforts that have been proven to increase
chances for maternal survival in rural communities
throughout the developing world. The ACCESS partnership
will engage policy-makers, providers and other key
stakeholders to ensure that integrated high-quality
services reach women, families and communities,
particularly marginalized and vulnerable populations.
Through existing partnerships, ACCESS will continue to
disseminate state-of-the-art practices for maternal,
newborn and women's health and further define and scale up
new strategies for linking women and newborns with basic
life-saving services.
"Through our work in MNH," Mancuso said, "we were able
to change the paradigm from maternal deaths to saving
women's and newborns' lives. We know how to ensure
survival. Every family in the world has the right to demand
access to quality care that makes the difference between
life and death. Through ACCESS, we can begin to turn that
promise into a reality."