Trip to Béré Adventist Hospital in Chad

By Kelsey Zuppan

I spent 6 weeks in Nov-Dec of 2024 with Sarah Sexton in Tchad, Africa at Béré Adventist Hospital. We first trained the short-term volunteers on campus in Essential Newborn Care 1 & 2, then some of those new providers assisted in teaching the hospital staff in Essential Newborn Care. Three years ago some of the hospital staff received the Helping Babies Breathe training from Sarah & I, so it was a refresher for some and brand new to others.

Nurses from maternity as well as the operating room attended Essential Newborn Care 1, learning tips to improve their newborn resuscitation and preparedness. Then we trained just the maternity nurses in Essential Newborn Care 2. They had great questions, we had many productive discussions, and lots of fun practicing and role playing.

Though the national average neonatal mortality rate in Tchad is 3.2%, Béré Hospital statistics showed a 7% mortality rate in 2023, likely a more accurate statistic in a country where the majority of births happen out in a village and are never recorded by the government. In contrast, the U.S. has a neonatal mortality rate of 0.3%, and neighboring countries like Cameroon and DRC report 2.6% mortality rates.

Nurses at Béré Hospital have the opportunity to resuscitate babies quite often. Just a few days after finishing the course the nurses on maternity reported a big resuscitation they did, then later the baby's temperature dropped, they put the baby back on skin to skin because of that, and started antibiotics. It was cool to see how proud they were of applying what they had just learned, and it worked!

A day later they had a baby deliver with a cleft palate, and were practicing all the things they learned about expressing breast milk and feeding the baby in other ways when it cannot get a good latch. Sarah had a couple preemie babies in her "home NICU" during this time that accompanied her in some of the testing and training. Baby Aubrey not only supervised several trainings but also provided a live demonstration of placing an NG tube for her feeds. There's nothing better than real life training!

All in all we ended up with 11 providers of Essential Newborn Care 1, one new trainer of Essential Newborn Care 1, and 12 new providers of Essential newborn Care 2. We are happy for the learning that has taken place and excited to see this continue to be put into action and improve care for neonates at Béré Hospital.

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