Welcome Home Baby

The Healthy Mothers/Welcome Home Baby Basket will be offered as a reward to women who have four prenatal care visits and a facility delivery. The basket itself, given after the baby is delivered, will be a container that can be re-used to transport water and wash clothes and will include simple but essential items to support the continued health of mother and baby. Each container will hold:

• Flannel sheets (as Rwandan mothers must bring their own bedding for the delivery and for wrapping the baby following birth)
• Plastic wraps to surround the baby’s cloth diapers
• Clean wrap skirts for mother and flannel cloths for baby to wear home
• An umbrella to shield from the hot sun
• Bar of Soap for hygiene for mother and baby
• A t-shirt for the baby that says (in Kinyarwandan, the local language of Rwanda): “I was born in a health facility” to help spread the word about the importance of delivering in a health
• clinic.

Each gift basket will cost $60.

To download a brochure about this initiative, go here.

IntraHealth has worked in Rwanda for nearly two decades to address its health care challenges, including one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. Despite the fact that obstetric complications can be prevented with quality pre-natal and emergency obstetric care, and skilled attendance at delivery, they are the leading cause of death for women of reproductive age in developing countries. Currently, less than 30% of Rwandan women deliver their babies in a health care facility due to both real and perceived barriers, including long distances to facilities, lack of funds for transportation to facilities, and fears about poor quality of care.

IntraHealth International is working to address these and other barriers by training health care providers in emergency obstetric care, through community mobilization and education efforts, and supporting community groups to work with health care facilities to develop emergency transport plans for laboring women.