MRC Maternal and Infant Health Care Strategies Research Unit.

2010·4.3 MB·English

by  Pattinson, R. C.

F, V & V inOBGyn, 2010, 2 (4): 217 Who’s who
MRC Maternal and Infant Health Care Strategies Research Unit
R. C. PattinsOn
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Klinikala Building, University of Pretoria, PO Box 667, Pretoria, 0001.
the Medical Research Council Maternal and infant the unit has established two national survey sys-
Health Care strategies Research unit was established tems in perinatal care and child care and has devel-
in partnership with the University of Pretoria in 1997 oped the database and does the analysis of the data
under the directorship of Professor Bob Pattinson. for the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths
although most of the original research team has in south africa. the three national survey reports
moved to new positions often in other countries, new (Saving Mothers, Saving Babies and Saving Chil-
researchers have joined and the research mandate dren) have clearly identified the major diseases caus-
upon which the unit was built has remained the ing maternal, perinatal and child deaths and also the
same. major health system failures. the unit has also de-
Our research mandate has been to develop health veloped a maternal near miss audit system, the basis
strategies at primary and secondary care levels for of which is being used in the WHO Global survey
mothers and infants by seeking saleable solutions. of maternal morbidity in 27 countries throughout the
By seeking we mean performing research; by world. a neonatal near miss audit system developed
saleablewe mean solutions that are acceptable to all by the unit is currently being tested.
namely women, health care workers and health ad- initially the unit was involved in performing mul-
ministrators; and by solutionswe mean health strate- ticentre randomized trials on common problems
gies that have been developed to solve the problems such as preterm labour, pre-eclampsia and eclampsia
identified. and managing normal term labour, to develop effec-
Bob Pattinson at work
217
tive guidelines suitable for south africa. However, Postnatal Care, Essential steps in Managing Obstet-
as the health problems have become more apparent ric Emergencies, and neonatal Resuscitation and
due to information provided by the survey systems, Care of the neonate. these packages have been in-
the unit has concentrated firstly on designing and im- tegrated and are being tested in Mpumalanga
plementing effective interventions and now more re- Province with the use of a specially developed infor-
cently in developing mechanisms to take the mation file for pregnant women and their families.
interventions to scale. an example of this has been Currently the unit is developing a maternal, perinatal
the developing Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) im- and child health care situational leadership develop-
plementations programme, testing it by running clus- ment programme to empower the health care
ter randomized trials in three provinces, then providers in district hospitals to implement appro-
implementing it nationally. there has been a signif- priate interventions.
icant impact of the programme; the perinatal survey Health strategies researched in this manner have
system has demonstrated a thirty percent reduction been implemented directly by the national and
in neonatal deaths of babies between 1.0-1.99kg in Provincial Departments of Health as guidelines for
sites after the introduction of KMC to those sites. primary and secondary health levels in their areas.
the KMC implementation training package has been in this way, workable, affordable solutions to essen-
adapted for and used in Ghana, Malawi, tanzania, tial national health problems in the field of maternal,
and indonesia. the unit has developed and tested perinatal and child health have resulted in benefit for
other quality improvement packages namely Basic women and children.
antenatal Care, Basic intrapartum care, Essential
218 F, V & V inOBGyn