Introducing integrated health services in a traditional society: the Sudan community-based family health project
El Tom, A.R.; Matthews, M.H.; Wessley, S.; Mubarak, N.; Lauro, D.
International Quarterly of Community Health Education 5(3): 187-202
1984
ISSN/ISBN: 0272-684X PMID: 20841138 DOI: 10.2190/a4u0-npf2-xk4p-f7fwDocument Number: 382938
The Sudan Community Based Family Health Project, begun in 1980, has sought to demonstrate that the existing cadre of practicing government-trained village midwives in the Sudan can be utilized to extend maternal and child health services to rural areas. A majority of these midwives are nonliterate, and attention was placed on effectively implementing a limited set of services, namely, oral rehydration, birth-spacing, nutrition education, and immunization. Carefully planned inservice training programs for midwives and local health workers and an intensive service introduction campaign implemented in phases resulted in mixed success over a relatively short period of observation. Perhaps the most important lessons that have emerged from the program have been about how to design and implement a rural MCH program building on local resources. The experience has since lead project staff to undertake, in a new area, a follow-up program designed to be a more cost-effective and replicable version of the original one.