Maternal Health
Having meticulously assessed each City’s capacity to offer both maternal and neonatal health care services, our advocacy efforts centered on specific recommendations for improving access to quality reproductive and maternal care, which emphasized the need for proper antenatal care, skilled health workers and clean, well-equipped facilities. In many cases, our work led to interventions undertaken by both MCI partners and MCI itself, aimed at advancing reproductive health outcomes in the Millennium Cities through medical trainings, surgical missions and raising the awareness of the importance of safe blood to maternal survival.
One exciting intervention MCI helped to facilitate included a series of ultrasound trainings and screenings in Kumasi, Ghana, led by the London-based International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology (ISUOG). ISUOG physicians hailing from all over the world trained local medical professionals to use ultrasound machines, which can help detect high-risk pregnancies and other complications requiring specialized care. Three state-of-the-art ultrasound machines were donated by Siemens as part of this partnership. During the course of the trainings, hundreds of expectant mothers were screened, enabling the ISUOG team and trainees to detect a number of high-risk cases that could then be treated in a timely fashion.