Maternal & Child Health Programme

GTTs maternal health programme lies 1 hour to the west of Kathmandu. It is in a rural area around Pharphing with people living up to 3 hours walk from the road. The area is mixed in ethnicity and religion.

The programme’s main aim is to improve antenatal care for all women living in this area. This is because improved antental care results in less women dying of complications in childbirth. From this we also expect to see an improvement in delivery and post natal care, reduced infant deaths in the first  year of life. The programme started in January 2008 and will run for 5 years.

Why Antenatal Care?

The community approach our charity requesting help to improve the health of their community. After 9 month of baseline assessment of health problems, then focus group discussions the community decided that improving maternal health was their main priority. We know from other programmes and extensive research that one way to achieve this is to improve antenatal care. This not only includes better medical services but also improved diet, access to monies, power to make their own health decisions, having a trained assistant at delivery and reducing delay in reaching health services should complications arise. Achieving this therefore requires the programme to work with fertile women, the people who influence their ability to access health services and food (mother in laws and husbands), access to medical facilities and access to money for delivery.