Train 25 Women to become Birth Attendants

I visited Bangladesh last April to meet with the American Ambassador to Bangladesh, hon. James Moriarty who visited our Hope Foundation hospital in Cox's Bazar. The trip was a great success. i also had the time to sit down with our Country Director Mr. Jalal Uddin Shoaib who is in charge of all the Hope projects in Bangladesh.

At the moment, a new dormitory/training center is being constructed, funded by the Japan Embassy in Bangladesh. This training center will be used for our future village nurses and birth attendants so that they can receive good training as well as have a dormitory to stay in for the duration of their course. This is very important since many of the women being trained are specifically selected from very rural areas where there are no doctors or trained nurses available for the local population. These areas are too far for the students to travel from every day.

Our first batch of students from this pilot program are due to graduate in August. They are currently being trained to use their cell phones to communicate health data from the patients in the villages to the hospital doctors. This will help the hospital staff to identify which patients need hospital care and those that do not. This will greatly help the village people since trips to the hospital are a burden to them, especially if they can be treated at their homes by the village nurses.

This will also be the start of a medical records system for the hospital. Most hospitals in Bangladesh, and all private physicians do not keep medical records of their patients, instead relying on patients to carry their files with them or relate from memory their health history.