Our colleagues Mr. Joseph Akuze and Ms Doris Kwesiga successfully disseminated results of their studies under “Every Newborn” and “INDEPTH” research projects.
Doris successfully shared the barriers to reporting pregnancy and outcomes citing stigma and psychosocial trauma as the major barriers inhibiting mothers from sharing their pregnancy stories. She said that the people the study team met did not want to recount their negative experiences especially for the purpose they don’t understand like research. Mothers usually asked, “why do you want me to talk about that ‘thing’ it’s dead and I don’t need to talk about it.”
Joseph on the other hand shared quantitative results citing that Full Birth Histories (FBH) have the potential to increase reporting of still births in high burdened contexts. Joseph, Doris and Prof Peter Waiswa were part of a pool of 121 authors launching 12 papers in BMC Pregnancy and Child Health journal on 15th and 17th of December 2020. The virtual event was conducted on zoom with a very active twitter presence and brought people from all over the world cultivating ideas for a better future for all newborns using results from the studies in 5 hospitals in Bangladesh, Nepal, Uganda and Tanzania.
During the event, Professor Peter Waiswa joined a team of experts presenting what the future holds and he shared that funders of projects should work directly with local experts because building local capacity is urgent given the very ambitious global goals and this guarantees effectiveness.
The academic further argued that this work should continue, and the country leaders should take full responsibility reckoning that without measure of pregnancy outcomes in the light of COVID 19 there will be no understanding of the pandemic’s impact on maternal newborn and child health
The studies were coordinated by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) with funding from Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF).
More about the researchers please follow the links below;
Doris Kwesiga here
Joseph Akuze here