UNFPA donates midwifery kits to hospital’s labour ward

By MELYNE BAROI
MOTHERS and babies at the labour ward in Port Moresby General Hospital will now be able to access improved baby delivery services – thanks to the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA).
This comes after UNFPA last week donated midwifery kits to the hospital (PMGH).
Mary Sitaing, sister-in-charge of the PMGH labour ward, said they struggled with the lack of medical tools to provide effective service to the mothers and their infants.
“We usually share the instruments we use on infants that are born,” she said.
“The process of sterilisation of instruments usually takes up time that we have to deal with the next baby and most times we use same instruments.”
She said the donation would definitely help with reducing neonatal infections where there a lot of babies seen having sore or infected umbilical cords after birth.
“This (illness) has been an ongoing issue at the ward and so we appreciate the donation by the UNFPA as it will help our babies and their mothers,” she said.
UNFPA country representative Marielle Sanders said that this gesture was a continued effort in their role of reducing the maternal death rates in the country.
“We the UNFPA, will continue to make sure there that there is quality care of women and children in Papua New Guinea” she said.
“This shows that we want to contribute to having more staff in the midwifery department so that we prevent large number of women and babies from dying,” she said.
Sanders added that this was part of their bilum campaign where the fallopian tube pattern represented the significance of a woman’s reproductive health.
“With the campaign and awareness about the fallopian tube bilum pattern, we further educate our people with the vital roles of a woman’s sexual and reproductive health and in promoting safe and healthy births,” she added.