Newborns Vietnam

INTRODUCTION

Newborns Vietnam (NBV) is a United Kingdom registered charity licensed to operate as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Vietnam dedicated to reducing neonatal mortality in South East Asia, with a specific focus on Vietnam. We believe that the most effective way of saving newborn lives starts with education and strengthening existing hospital based care. Working in collaboration with our public health partners in Vietnam we develop capacity to improve the survival of newborn infants and their long-term health outcomes.

THE CHALLENGES

The challenge for Vietnam, as a middle-income country, is strengthening existing hospital-based care, this is the most effective way of saving newborn lives. In high-income settings, access to high-quality care is nearly universal, in middle-income countries, coverage, access and quality of care can vary. The Ministry of Health (MOH) has identified the lack of specialist doctors as a major factor in why neonatal care remains poor, only 10% of doctors are specialists. The other factors are there is no specialist training for nurses in neonatal care, limited training for provincial hospitals and no safe transport. Outside of high-income settings, there are almost no specialist neonatal training programmes for doctors and nurses.

VISION

Our vision is a world where there are no preventable deaths of newborn infants, where every birth is celebrated, and mothers and babies survive and realise their full potential. We believe passionately that every child, no matter where in the world they are born, deserves the chance to celebrate his or her first birthday and to grow into a healthy independent adult who can contribute to society without being burdened by the effects of adverse events during the first day or weeks of life.

OUR WORK

The focus of our work is addressing the deficit of specialist neonatal medical and nursing education to strengthen hospital-based intensive care, this ranges from training to get the simple basics right for every baby to post graduate level. The programmes we develop are often the first of their kind and serve as pilots to identify what works, evidenced by the impact of the intervention on key newborn outcomes before being adapted for replication within the national training system.