Sometimes working at high levels means you can get things done, but it can also be easy to lapse into thinking in aggregate – just looking at the statistics and the trends. To forget that these are individuals who have died, leaving behind grieving families. The study gave all of us the opportunity to reflect, to think about those important details, to consider how each of us personally will make the system a reality.
One of the most important things that I have been working on with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare is strengthening the system designed to help us find out why mothers and babies die. If we don’t have that information, then we can’t fix the things that go wrong. This is called a maternal or perinatal death review.We should be proud of our Government for the amount of time and effort they are investing in getting this right. So, I was very excited to play my part in an event which would bring different stakeholders together as a milestone to updating the existing guidelines with the latest evidence for the Tanzanian context.The forum was very well participated by health professionals with experience and expertise at every level of the system in Tanzania – with the zones, regions, districts and hospitals in attendance as well as the full leadership of the Reproductive and Child Health Section. In addition several UN and civil society partners contributed to the discussions. We need everyone to understand their role in making this happen – and most importantly, what they each need to do as a result of finding out what went wrong when a mother or baby dies during pregnancy and childbirth.One of the highlights of this meeting for me was watching the reaction of the audience when I presented on what we had found when we went to Mara. Our study was looking at how Mara was getting on with implementing a system of maternal and perinatal death reviews, and provided some important insights that were also representative of MPDR implementation across other regions of Tanzania.Sometimes working at high levels means you can get things done, but it can also be easy to lapse into thinking in aggregate – just looking at the statistics and the trends. To forget that these are individuals who have died, leaving behind grieving families. The study gave all of us the opportunity to reflect, to think about those important details, to consider how each of us personally will make the system a reality.By the end of the forum, we had agreed a plan for the finalisation of updating the guidelines for rolling out in phases across the country, focusing on improving the quality of the reviews while also introducing the new state of the art guidelines. It was hard work, but well worth the effort. I’m delighted to be part of the next phase – I promise to do my best for our mothers and babies!