Women’s Health

Improving Maternal Outcomes

In Haiti, women are often the sole providers in families that survive on less than a dollar a day. A small percentage of births are attended by a skilled assistant. More women die in pregnancy and childbirth in Haiti than any other country in the Western Hemisphere.

The primary goal of Konbit Sante's work in women's health is to improve maternal outcomes in Cap-Haitien. To this end, Youseline Telemaque, a Haitian OB/GYN sponsored by Konbit Sante, with the support of her U.S. partner, Eva Lathrop, MD, MPH, chair of Konbit Sante's volunteer women's health team, has launched a multi-faceted program. This program works to meet women's needs on multiple levels, from providing education and outreach at the community level to improving emergency response time at the regional referral hospital. Their work is based on the needs that were identified during an assessment of women's health needs in Cap-Haitien that Konbit Sante conducted in 2006.

Dr. Telemaque is in on the ground full time, juggling her time between training traditional birth attendants (who deliver the majority of the babies in Cap-Haitien), collecting information at the community level about birth outcomes, delivering babies at the Fort St. Michel Health Center's birthing facility, training medical residents at the Justinian Hospital, and conducting community clinics. She works closely with the community health workers, to get their assistance in her outreach efforts, and as of summer 2010, she has a nurse assistant to help her in accomplishing her numerous objectives.

Dr. Telemaque training traditional birth attendants.In addition to providing pre- and post-natal care, in 2010 she launched a program to provide postpartum family planning. Drs. Lathrop and Telemaque's work on postpartum family planning was presented at the International Conference on Family Planning: Research and Best Practices conference held in Uganda in November 2009, through a grant from the Gates Foundation.