Maternity team supports communities in Zimbabwe via an educational exchange programme

Date: 23/01/2025 | Category: News 2025

Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust is incredibly proud of its international workforce and is immensely grateful to all those who’ve chosen to live in the UK and care for the residents of Buckinghamshire.

Inspired by Mary Mutizwa, one of many skilled healthcare professionals who have left their home country to join its maternity team at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the Trust is entering into a formal health partnership with the Luisa Guidotti Hospital in Mukoto, Zimbabwe where Mary trained.

The UK Zimbabwe Health Partnerships Pilot programme, established by Global Health Partnerships (formerly THET) and funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, is seeking to improve maternal and neonatal care at the hospital in Zimbabwe and in its surrounding communities by reducing the rate of maternal and neonatal mortality. The team from the Trust will partner with local health professionals, to deliver a combination of in-person and virtual training sessions. The training will cover life-saving skills, including emergency obstetric care and neonatal resuscitation. The idea is to ‘train the trainer’ so the local teams are then able to roll out the training across the entire workforce involved in maternal and neonatal care to ensure sustainability and self-sufficiency.

As part of this programme, the Trust’s, director of midwifery, Michelle East is travelling to Zimbabwe at the end of January with Mary to attend the official launch of the programme and spend time with the team at the Luisa Guidotti Hospital to plan programme activity for the rest of year. This initial visit will be followed by another in April 2025 when three midwives from the Trust will return to Zimbabwe to deliver workshops to approximately 80 midwives and nurses from across the region.

Michelle East said: “We are delighted to be entering into partnership.  As well as passing on our expertise to local teams in Zimbabwe, we are also looking forward to learning from clinical colleagues working at the Luisa Guidotti Hospital. For example, we are hoping to develop a deeper understanding of global health issues such as the rising rates of neonatal death associated with climate change and to gain a better understanding of why the maternal death rate for black women in the UK is four times higher than for white women. This insight will help us to make changes to ensure that we address this inequity making it safer for all women who give birth in Buckinghamshire.”