By Rara Dethan and Sarah Meyanathan

HAI is excited to announce its new collaboration with another project funded by the Australian Government; the Health Transport Project (HTP). HTP supports the Ministry of Health(MOH) to build maintenance capacity of emergency transport and support technical training to improve the quality of ambulance care to patients.  Ambulance staff often find themselves in critical obstetric situations where they have to deliver the baby or a women hemorrhages before reaching the health facility.

Through this partnership HAI is providing support to the MOH team of eight including: ambulance drivers, volunteers, paramedics in Emergency Childbirth/ Delivery, so they are better equipped to support mothers and their babies.

Training with dummy doll

On June 10, HAI midwife and clinical trainer, Rara Dethan facilitated a training session in emergency newborn resuscitation. ‘Trainings like these are really helpful because we get lots of complicated cases in the ambulance that we have to deal with’ said Dr. Nuno Vital Soares, a paramedic on the team and Head of the Emergency Medical Department. The training sessions aim to increase skills and confidence of the ambulance team to take appropriate action for obstetric cases that often arise.

Training session

Two out of four sessions have been conducted thus far and used a combination of presentation, video, demonstration, and practice. Based on the results from these sessions with the ambulance team based in Dili, HAI and the HTP will explore options for expanding the collaboration to emergency transport staff at the district level.