Scaling up Maternal and Newborn Care in Vietnam

At the seventh month, Giang A Nha is as fit as any other child of his age, with no sign of being a preterm baby. “Without the doctors’ care, he wouldn’t have survived,” said Nha’s grandfather, in Ban Mu commune, Tram Tau district in the northern mountainous province of Yen Bai.

Born a preterm baby in his mother’s eighth month of pregnancy, Nha weighed just 1.2 kg and had respiratory problems. Right after his birth, the trained staff on newborn care resuscitation at the health center took care of him with a mask and nasal prong oxygen before transferring him to the newborn care unit. Being too weak for breastfeeding, Nha had to receive nutrition through the stomach and was treated with anti-biotic. To add to Nha’s health complications, he started to have neonatal jaundice.

Health workers at the health center took turns to take care of the baby boy, following his health developments and instructed the new mother to express her milk to feed him. After days of lighting, the jaundice eased and then ended altogether.

After half a month of essential care, Nha’s health got better and he got home amid his family’s excitement. Before his departure from the health center, health workers instructed his mother and family to take care of him and to feed him with breastfeeding.

Nha is one of dozens of preterm children born and received essential care at the commune health center Tram Tau, one of Vietnam’s 62 poorest and most disadvantaged districts, since its staff got training in newborn care. Prior to 2013, the center had poor healthcare equipment and its health workers had little training in newborn care. With the support from a program coordinated by the Ministry of Health and Save the Children, the center’s newborn treatment unit has been renovated and received essential equipment. Its staff have been sent to extensive training courses at the national pediatrics hospital.

The program, officially known as “Scale up of the model of Household to hospital Continuum of Maternal and Newborn Care in Vietnam,” aims to improve maternal and newborn health and reduce maternal and infant deaths in Yen Bai province. It provides training for district and provincial health workers in emergency obstetric and newborn care, and in post-training implementation. The program also works to create a favorable environment for the household-to-hospital continuum care approach and organize communications campaigns at the community to raise awareness about the mother and newborns’ health complications.

Health workers at the center used to transfer all newborns with these issues to the provincial hospital or to the national hospital in Hanoi. Now they are treated in the local health center. 

In Nha’s case, he and his mother’s lives couldn’t have been secured if he had been delivered at home or if they had been transported to the provincial hospital around 30 km away, a common practice for years.

“We are doing our best to take good care of newborns,” said Trinh Van Nghia, director of Tram Tau district health center. “We will have a new center building soon, then we will offer rooms for new mothers too, so that they will be willing to have their newborns taken care here.”

Article by Nguyen Thi Cam