Introducing a comprehensive package of interventions for survival and wellbeing of premature/low birthweight newborns at Katavi Regional Referral Hospital
Thamini Uhai applied and successfully won a 50,000 USD grant from Laerdal foundation’s Saving Lives at Birth initiative in October 2020 on “Introducing and sustaining a comprehensive package of interventions for survival and wellbeing of premature babies at Katavi Regional Referral Hospital. The aim of the project is assessment of the impact of introducing a comprehensive package of evidence based cost-effective interventions for the survival and wellbeing of premature babies at a Katavi regional referral hospital in South-western Tanzania. The one year project designed in form of implementation research measuring the impact of scaling-up premature care bundle at a regional referral hospital will include healthcare providers training, support for minor improvement of newborn care infrastructure, procurement of essential supplies for newborn care, supportive supervision and mentorship, data collection, analysis and results dissemination at regional level and scientific forums .
Ethical approval was sought and obtained from NIMR in August 2021. A baseline status of infrastructure, resource, practices and outcomes of premature/low birth newborn care will be established through assessment and retrospective six months data collection in September 2021. This will be followed by building the capacity and implementation of the package of premature/low birth weight newborns bundle. Data collection will be done throughout the six months of implementation and comparison made with the baseline. Study participants will be all mothers at risk of preterm delivery (below 37 weeks) and newborns delivered preterm/low birth weight(less than 2.5kg. Lessons learned from this implementation study will be disseminated through available local and international scientific forums to advocate for scale-up countrywide and beyond.