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Women and Child Health

Development

Women and Child Health Development (WCHD) section has been implementing the

interventions for maternal, newborn and child health care services with continuum of care

approach to achieve Millennium Development Goals under the guidance of National Health

Plan (2011-2016), Five year Strategic Plan for Child Health (2010-2014) and Reproductive

Health (2009-2013).

While provision of health services for mothers and children including newborn, WCHD has

been implementing interventions based on Child Health Development Plan (2011-2012).

There are 5 main thrust areas as the way forward for Women and Child Health Development to

reach the MDG 4 and 5 include:

(a) Essential Newborn Care comprising of home visits for newborn care, and regular child

death review at all levels including audits in health facilities and hospitals

(b) Community case management of pneumonia and diarrhoea through BHS

(c) Referral care for sick newborns, children and pregnant women in hospitals

(d) Improving antenatal, delivery and post partum care for mothers

(e) Community capacity development/behavior change communication for 5 keys

community practices to empower the families in child care and promote early and

appropriate care seeking during illnesses.

The implementation has been based on scenarios i.e. coverage of DPT 3. Interventions have

been provided by three delivery channels to cover continuum of care across the health system

such as family oriented self care supported mostly by BHS and some family oriented self care

supported by community health workers/ volunteers, population oriented schedulable/ outreach

services and individual oriented clinical care in health centers and hospitals.

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Professor Dr. Pe Thet Khin, Union Minister for Health

delivered opening speech at National Level Advocacy and

Coordination Meeting on Newborn Networking

As newborn is the most crucial period for reducing child mortality rate, more emphasis on

newborn health is needed, national level advocacy and coordinating meeting on newborn

networking was held through child survival forum in 2011 with the objective: to strengthen the

Regional neonatal perinatal network and promote national networks for strengthening neonatal

healthcare toward the attainment of MDG 4, to use the data generated for quality improvement

of newborn care, to generate and disseminate prospectively collected data on neonatal-perinatal

morbidity and mortality at the network institutions, to build collaboration and consensus on

promoting evidence based newborn heath care, education and training in the member States and

the Region and established network in 7 neonatal units in institutional hospitals and some

regional institutions from Nay Pyi Taw, Magway, Monywa, South Okkalapa, Insein,

Thingankyun and Pyinmana General Hospitals and dissemination of data will be done in 2012-

2013.

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National technical working group for

child health development meeting on

mapping of maternal and child health

services in Myanmar

Moreover, National technical working group for child health development meeting on mapping

of maternal and child health services in Myanmar had been done in 2011 with the aims to create

an inventory of all dedicated maternal and child health services provided by all stakeholders and

the investment in them and with the purpose of sharing the description of service provision

among partners, assist in the bid for resources for service development, provision of

information in formulating service frameworks and delivery plan targets and achievement of

universal coverage of maternal and child health care interventions without overlapping.

Also community based newborn care (CBNBC) as a comprehensive strategy to reduce the death

of newborn by allowing the trained Health Volunteers to participate in Essential Newborn Care

such as early and exclusive breastfeeding, hygienic umbilical care, and skin to skin care, etc.

will be expanded in another 5 townships during 2012.

Pilot implementation of Community case management of pneumonia and diarrhea through

health volunteers had been initiated since 2011 and evaluation was done at the end of 2011 and

the findings from evaluation will be disseminated in 2012.