Every year more than 2.5 million newborns die worldwide, often due to delivery-related causes. Most of these deaths take place in limited-resource countries with poor or inadequate access to health care.
In such settings, the Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) is of fundamental importance, training staff so that they can acquire the skills needed to reduce newborn mortality rates.
This study was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of such programs in improving the performance of healthcare personnel in resuscitating newborns. Training was provided to 16 midwives in charge of postnatal management at Mozambique’s Beira Hospital, with an average seven years of work experience. In order to identify possible improvements in the way the midwives handled newborns in need of resuscitation, their performances were evaluated both prior to and following the training course.
After the course ended, improvements were found in the midwives’ use of masks for ventilation and chest compression performance, with a drop in the amount of time required to carry out the full procedure.
In limited-resource settings such as Mozambique, despite numerous aspects that still need to be improved, newborn treatment and care can be made more effective by providing staff with neonatal resuscitation training.