GP to donate mobile phones to paramedics

With this generous donation, families will find it much easier to ensure the presence of trained medical providers at childbirth. And the midwives themselves will be able to easily contact hospitals or other emergency obstetric care centres should the need arise.

In Bangladesh, 90 percent of births take place at home -- many attended by unskilled traditional birth attendants, family members, or no-one at all, said a press release. Only four percent of deliveries in very poor families are attended by skilled health personnel.

Bangladesh's maternal mortality rate is currently between 320 and 400 per 100,000 live births, one of the highest in the world. Use of skilled birth attendants holds much promise in helping to meet the UN Millennium Development Goal of reducing that rate to 143 by 2015.

The NSDP plan aims to increase the use of skilled birth attendants by making paramedics from Smiling Sun clinics available after hours, and by improving their skills and providing other logistical support, including clean delivery kits.

Since the Smiling Sun NGOs serve mostly poor families, the Grameen assistance is vitally important. Since few poor families will have a phone available to call for a skilled health worker to conduct a normal delivery, or to call an ambulance for a complicated delivery.

Providing mobile phones to community-based paramedics will help reduce the numbers of complicated deliveries where women never reach a hospital for emergency management.

NSDP (the NGO Service Delivery Programme) is a consortium of international development partners, which provides technical assistance and support to a network of 35 Bangladeshi health care NGOs.