Kybele April 2021 E-Newsletter

APRIL 30, 2021

Kybele Awarded Supplemental $150,000 Grant

to Improve Obstetric Triage in Ghana

Kybele is thrilled to announce a $150,000 grant awarded by Grand Challenges Canada in supplemental funding for our innovative Obstetric Triage Implementation Package (OTIP) in Ghana. This grant is part of the Saving Lives at Birth program—a strategic partnership of organizations including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), THE Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, UK Department for International Development (DFID), AND Korea International Cooperative Association (KOICA).

The funding will leverage Kybele’s successful introduction of OTIP to high-volume referral facilities in Ghana in 2019 and 2020. Under the supplemental award, Kybele will achieve several critical goals that will contribute to improved maternal and neonatal outcomes:

Integrate the Modified Early Obstetric Warning System (MEOWS) model into the OTIP high-volume referral hospitals. This enables at-risk mothers to be closely monitored following triage and triggers a threshold for medical review and intervention.

Understand the mechanisms for successful OTIP implementation and sustainability by evaluating determinants of acceptability, adoption, and sustainability that have made the OTIP program successful. This will enable further scalability.

Extend OTIP training and implementation to two additional hospitals led by the Ghana Health Service Institutional Care Division. This will allow for local execution and ownership to promote further national rollout.

Synthesize OTIP materials for global use. This involves packaging the OTIP tools, protocols, and model into a marketable prototype that can be used for broad dissemination.

Ultimately, the supplemental funds will optimize OTIP for long-term sustainability, enhance integration into the national standards of care within Ghana, and prepare OTIP for global impact.

For more information about Kybele, visit kybeleworldwide.org.

This project is undertaken with the financial support of Grand Challenges Canada and the Government of Canada, through Global Affairs Canada (GAC). For more information, visit grandchallenges.ca.

Every day, thousands of women around the world go into labor in hopes of safely delivering a healthy newborn. Unfortunately, for too many, this moment is filled with fear and uncertainty. Even more unfortunate are the numbers of babies and mothers who do not survive, often due to preventable causes.

Kybele is working to change this. We believe that safe childbirth with quality care is a basic right. Our programs, backed by years of clinical research, have demonstrated that this is an achievable goal!

You can support the work of Kybele by making a gift in honor of a special Mom in your life. Your gift provides mothers across the globe with safe conditions and high-quality clinical care, giving them the peace of mind that their labor and delivery experience will be the best it possibly can be.

YES, I want to change a Mother's life.

Kybele’s Ghanaian partners have successfully launched the Modified Early Obstetric Warning System (MEOWS) in seven high-volume referral hospitals in Ghana.

MEOWS is a tool that enables at-risk mothers to be closely monitored following triage. This monitoring aids health professionals in the early recognition and management of women with high-risk pregnancy conditions. MEOWS allows for recognition of abnormal physiological vital signs and triggers a threshold for medical review and intervention.

Kybele originally developed and tested an obstetric triage training module in 2013 at Ridge Regional Hospital. Based on the success at Ridge (now Greater Accra Regional Hospital), the triage package was scaled to Tema General Hospital. The Saving Lives at Birth grant in 2019 allowed us to package and expand OTIP (Obstetric Triage Implementation Package) to six additional hospitals in 2019. Observations at these hospitals highlighted the need for ensuring the continuity of high-quality care for high-risk patients beyond the triage period. As a response, MEOWS was launched in June 2020 at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, where it was successfully adopted. That success has led to the current expansion.

Despite the ongoing challenges and restrictions of the global Coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Martin Boamah, Greater Accra Regional Hospital, and Master Clinical Champion Cecilia Tetteh, University of Ghana, successfully trained lead health personnel at the seven total OTIP sites (Sunyani Municipal Hospital, Sunyani Regional Hospital, Ga West Municipal Hospital, Nsawam Government Hospital, Koforidua Regional Hospital, Weija Municipal Hospital and Tema General Hospital.) The three-day train-the-trainer program was held in early March 2021 in Accra and was attended by seven physicians and 38 nurse midwives. These newly trained champions will share their knowledge with their respective units. This knowledge along with the MEOWS monitoring tools will allow them to assess utilization and impact of the system.

We are grateful to have had strong Ghanaian leadership to deliver this program in an engaging and effective way while observing COVID safety protocols. The commitment and dedication of these professionals to the women and babies of Ghana is humbling.

In honor of our 20th Anniversary year, Kybele has created a series of video interviews about Kybele's work. This video was shot and edited by Kybele Media Consultant Dayne Logan and features Kybele Board President and Ghana Team Member, Fiona Bryce.

A retired obstetrician from the UK, Fiona Bryce has been a Kybele Board Member, volunteer, and a team leader for our work in Ghana for many years. In addition to providing clinical experience, Fiona also exhibits care and compassion for the many individuals we work alongside with. Working side-by-side to improve birth outcomes, relationships are formed and futures are changed. Hear more about one such individual who has touched Fiona, and how working with Kybele led this young midwife to do more.

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