Prematurity is the single largest cause of under-5 child and newborn mortality. Out of 2.5 million newborn deaths, about 1 million are attributed to direct complications of prematurity. Feasible, cost-effective solutions, such as Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC), exists to prevent mortality and morbidity. The World Health Organization recommends KMC for the routine care of newborns weighing 2000 g or less at birth, initiated in health-care facilities as soon as the newborns are clinically stable. The latest systematic review showed that KMC reduces the risk of death in small newborns by 40%, compared to conventional care in low incomes countries. Similarly, KMC had significant, long-lasting social and behavioral protective effects 20 years after the intervention. Despite this evidence and recommendations, there are still barriers to KMC implementation at scale, including lack of health facility readiness to deliver KMC, and provider-related barriers, including absence of clear guidelines and skepticism of the benefits of KMC, among others.
New Training Guide
UNICEF and Save the Children, together with other partners, have developed a facilitator guide coupled with power-point presentations and other resources that can be used for competency based training of health facility teams for setting up KMC service. In addition, the resources include tools and guidance in monitoring and evaluation of KMC. This facilitator guide has been pre-tested and reviewed in light of multiple regional workshops and brings together all the available partner resources and tools for clinical care.
The guide focuses on building learners experience then takes step by step skill demonstration and practice on essential care, thermal control, feeding and infection prevention. It includes video demonstrations and PowerPoint presentations to demonstrate key skills and step by step actions for setting, monitoring and evaluating KMC services.
Access the facilitators guide here. All the supporting materials can be accessed in this dropbox link.
Find a facilitator
The training program needs a course coordinator and five facilitators with relevant skills and experience, administrative and support staff. To support identifying facilitators, a list KMC Researchers and Trainers is also provided.