India’s Health Minister, J.P. Nadda, has officially opened the Skills Lab, a collaboration with LSTM, at the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW) during the 38th annual day celebration of NIHFW on March 9th.
The NIHFW is one of the education institutes in Delhi collaborating with LSTM’s Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health (CMNH) as part of their Making It Happen (MiH) programme. The skills lab will start training health professionals from high focus states in India. These states are the ones where the need in improvement in Maternal and Newborn Health is the highest.
Following the unveiling of the plaque, the Minister was given a tour of the Skills Lab, by a number of health professionals, including Dr Ritu Agarwal, LSTM’s Senior Technical Advisor for the programme in New Delhi. The Minister was very impressed by the facilities on offer and the demonstrations given by the staff on site.
MiH has been operating in 7 high focus states in India since January 2010. It is a programme which utilises the skills of NHS trained midwives, obstetricians and gynaecologists to train in country heath workers to provide safe birth attendance and emergency obstetrics care to improve the outcomes for mothers and their unborn children in 11 countries across Africa and Asia.