Our Clinic #9: The Global Midwife Education Foundation

Sarah Hinton is a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM), with extensive international experience in midwifery, education, research, and clinical practices. Genevieve Reid, MD, has practiced full scope family medicine and obstetrics in rural areas of the United States for over two decades. In 2010, Genevieve founded The Global Midwife Education Foundation (GMEF), where Sarah currently serves as a Board Member.

Global Midwife Education Foundation (GMEF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit that aims to empower communities and lower infant mortality and morbidity in rural areas of the developing world. GMEF educates birth attendants through sustainable, community-based, and long-term education programs.

Physician Genevieve Reid and midwife Sarah Hinton of GMEF have been able to train more than 120 staff in the use of anti-shock garments (NASG) as part of the 'Helping Mothers Survive Bleeding After Birth' training program in the rural regions of Bolivia. In rural villages, individuals are hours away from medical care. Therefore, they need all the tools they can get to buy time and provide women with life-saving treatments when complications arise.

GMEF discovered that some of the midwives and community health workers reported already having NASGs in their facilities; however, they were never trained on using these devices! GMEF has been able to provide training and practice sessions for the staff in these facilities, as well as provide NASGs to attendants who did not have them available. The staff had a great time practicing and using these garments on each other. Soon after, they were conducting more serious emergency drills with simulated patients.

The non-pneumatic anti-shock garment is a low-cost first-aid device that limits persistent post-partum hemorrhage (PPH). PPH — or severe bleeding after childbirth — is the largest direct cause of maternal mortality worldwide (UNICEF).

Before GMEF's NASG trainings, stories emerging from these facilities were quite harrowing. One staff reported doing bimanual compressions continually for 8 hours while transporting a 17-year-old adolescent who had just given birth and had a severe postpartum hemorrhage. She survived, but had to have a hysterectomy upon arrival at the hospital to control the bleeding. Another shared that in the year before attending the NASG training, one patient, a mother of three, bled to death during transportation between a small hospital without surgical capacity to a larger hospital one hour away. Having anti-shock garments available may have prevented this tragedy, and GMEF is grateful to work hand-in-hand with Maternova to ensure that staff have essential training and equipment needed to prevent outcomes like these.

Read more about GMEF and its programs here. Find Maternova's NASG here.