Ruth Maithya

In Kenya, our strong partners at Amref Health Africa are using the Safe Delivery App in their training of midwives at their International University in Nairobi.

Ruth Maithya is a Nursing & Midwifery Educator at Amref and she uses the App as an integrated tool in her training of midwives – in the classroom and in the skills lab.

“The App focuses on basic obstetric emergencies, which are the leading killers of mothers in most countries, including Kenya. We are training skilled birth attendants to handle these, using the Safe delivery App.

The midwives I train through the App are already working in the clinics. They use the App as a job-aid, and as a reference and refresher tool in their work. They can stay constantly updated through the app’s animations, action cards, drug lists. It’s very easy to use, you just need a smartphone, you can even use it offline. It’s simple and realistic and easy for them to follow.

As a midwife, you experience emergencies all the time. Through the app your way to work, you can renew your knowledge on a specific emergency on your way to work. Or if you work at a bigger referral hospital and they call from a smaller clinic to say ‘we are bringing in a woman with severe pre-eclampsia’, the midwife can read up on that specific emergency in the App before the woman comes in. It means that midwives are ready and confident for emergencies at any time.

The app is free, which saves us a lot of money and time on training. Because it’s on the App, they won’t need to leave the clinic for training. It saves us time in the skills lab, too. Before the App, I would need to demonstrate a specific skill for maybe two hours, and now it’s faster because they already know it from the App.

Technology is here to stay and it helps us a lot. We can train more midwives at a lower cost, and we can stay updated and ready for emergencies at all times.”