Saving Little Lives in Ethiopia

16/12/2023

The Saving Little Lives in Ethiopia consortium members are proud to contribute to the evidence-base for the "New World Health Organization recommendations for care of preterm or low birth weight infants".

Approximately 11% of infants are born preterm, and complications of prematurity are the most common cause of death in children aged under five years. Almost one million preterm infants die each year across low, high and middle income countries. In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened a...

15/12/2023

On 11 Dec 2023 the Saving Little Lives in Ethiopia team at the Center for Implementation Sciences (CIS) in Health of Addis Ababa University had a productive meeting with Hawassa University SLL team who are collaborating with the Sidama, South West Ethiopia, Centeral Ethiopia, and South Ethiopia regional health bureaus and UNICEF Ethiopia to implement the program across 73 hospitals in the four regions.

SLL is being implemented with strong ownership and leadership of the Ministry of Health, across 290 hospitals nationally and aims to reduce neonatal mortality by improving care for preterm and/or low birth weight infants at labour and delivery, NICU, and KMC units.

During the meeting implementation, program learning, and evaluation progresses and plans to complete the remaining program activities, publications and dissemination of learnings were reviewed and discussed.

10/12/2023

The Saving Little Lives in Ethiopia team from Addis Ababa university had a great day with the Mekelle University Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive and Child Health (MARCH) research center team who are collaborating with the Tigray Regional Health Bureau and UNICEF Ethiopia to implement the program in Tigray region.

We discussed the implementation, program learning, and evaluation progress and plans to complete the remaining program activities.

We also had the opportunity to visit the childbirth care and neonatal intensive care units (NICU) of Ayder Referral Hospital and briefed on the SLL support provided to the hospital and how the support has helped to improve the care for preterm and/or low birth weight infants in the hospital.

SLL is being implemented with strong leadership of the Ministry of Health,Ethiopia in 32 hospitals across Tigray region (and about 290 hospitals nationally) and aims to reduce neonatal mortality by improving care for preterm and/or low birth weight infants at labour and delivery, NICU, and KMC units.

26/12/2022

Yet another evidence from the KMC implementation research in Ethiopia.

Congrats Emory University team.

"It is possible to achieve high coverage (63%), high-quality KMC at public hospitals without prior KMC services using government-owned, multisectoral collaborative design. Targeted co-design, real-time data and customisation of KMC interventions with input from impacted stakeholders was critical in achieving high coverage and sustained quality".

Aim As part of a multi-country implementation trial, we tested a regionally specific model of kangaroo mother care (KMC). Effective KMC was defined as ≥8 h of newborn-caregiver skin-to-skin contact ...

19/11/2022

A powerful story!

Kangaroo Mother (or Father) Care with continuous skin-to-skin contact.

15/11/2022

If you have not already, please register now.

Launch of WHO recommendations for care of the preterm or low-birth-weight infant

Thursday, 17 November 2022
3pm Addis Ababa time (ከቀኑ 9 ሰዓት ላይ) (90mins)

This webinar is hosted by the Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing, World Health Organization Geneva.

02/11/2022

We have vacancy. Please apply or share it widely.

Position: Implementation Support Assistant

Duty station: Addis Ababa, with frequent travel to field.

Application deadline: 08 Nov 2022

BackgroundAddis Ababa University in partnership with Emory, Hawassa, and Mekelle Universities and the ministry of health, Oromia, Amhara, SNNP, Sidama and Tigray regional health bureaus, is finalizing preparation to start implementation of the Saving Little Lives (SLL) project in Ethiopia. The SLL p

22/10/2022

NeoNatalie Live – Impactful training on newborn resuscitation

Join the webinar on 2 November 2022 to learn about NeoNatalie Live! Sign-up using the link below.

What is NeoNatalie Live?

With its own app for phones and tablets, it guides health workers through simulated patient cases and provides objective feedback. Whether training individually or as a team, NeoNatalie Live delivers realistic training that motivates through:

Delivering convenient in-situ training (enables for short, frequent training designed to fit the busy schedules of health workers)
Enhancing training programs (aligned with WHO’s Essential Newborn Care Course and Helping Babies Breathe program)
Providing immediate feedback (objective response after a session, prompting specific interventions)
Integrating heart rate monitoring into newborn resuscitation (addresses the importance of ECG heart rate; Pairable with NeoBeat)

Learn how you can implement NeoNatalie Live into newborn training programs in low resource settings by joining our upcoming webinar on the 2nd of November at 09:00 CEST/10.00 EAT or 15:00 CEST/09:00 EDT.

Register now and do spread the word!

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22/09/2022

The Saving Little Lives in Ethiopia (SLL) has brought together heads of the Labour and Delivery (LD) and Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU)/ Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) units of 24 hospitals in Oromia region to validate the key findings of a formative assessment conducted in the second phase hospitals.

The formative assessment is an important step in the SLL implementation process where existing gaps and opportunities to provide quality LD and NICU/KMC care are identified and used to inform the contextualized implementation of minimum care package for preterm and low birth weight infants in the hospitals.

02/08/2022

This year's motto for the world breastfeeding week is "Step up for breastfeeding: education and support"

Let's all do our parts to improve breastfeeding practices for the health and well being of infants, mothers, families, and the humanity at large.

13/06/2022

An implementation research conducted in Tigray demonstrated that high coverage of Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is possible in resource limited settings.

Aim To evaluate coverage of effective Kangaroo mother care (KMC) by developing a model that would result in high coverage (≥80%) of KMC for newborn weighing less than 2000 g at birth in Tigray regio...

13/06/2022

An implementation research conducted in Oromia region of demonstrated Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) can be successfully scaled-up in resource poor settings.

Aim To develop a locally tested and optimised Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) scale-up model to achieve high population-based effective coverage of KMC in Oromia region. Method We conducted an implemen...