West African countries like Mali, Niger, and Senegal face a critical shortage of health workers, especially in rural areas, contributing to high rates of maternal and child mortality. The Classroom to Care (C2C) project, led by Global Communities’ partner IntraHealth International, is laying the foundation to change that situation.
With funding from Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, C2C supports 12 private health training institutions in the three countries to graduate nurses and midwives who are ready to meet maternal and newborn health challenges in underserved communities. The schools now apply a competency-based approach to education that considers the needs of the local population and the real-life work conditions that students will experience.
Education has also been transformed by the establishment of modern skills labs that equip students to train in realistic conditions, complemented by an eLearning platform for access to resources and self-training. As Adiaratou Dembélé, a graduating student in Mali, noted: “Even before going into the field, we practiced deliveries, injections, and other procedures on highly realistic mannequins provided by the project.”
Clinical placements then allow students to engage in actual service delivery and patient care under the supervision of instructors and health facility clinicians. At the end of the project’s third year, 7,046 nursing and midwifery students—74% of whom are women—were benefitting from updated curricula adapted to local clinical practice and the opportunities to gain hands-on experience in safe and controlled environments.
Making it easier for women with family responsibilities to enroll in and graduate from training has been one of C2C’s goals, resulting in improvements at the schools including dedicated spaces designed to accommodate pregnant and breastfeeding students. “This initiative allowed many young mothers to complete their studies,” said Dr. Siriman Sissoko, director of ESK, one of the participating schools in Mali.
C2C is implemented in collaboration with government ministries of health and education and the West African Health Organization (WAHO), fostering sustainable and effective partnerships between the private institutions and the public health sector and WAHO’s goal of a harmonized regional training curricula for nurses and midwives that addresses current disease patterns and the migration of people across borders.
“A win-win partnership, as they say…” summed up Boubacar Thiombiano, Director of Studies and Faculty at ENSP/Damoure Zika, a participating school in Niger, about C2C’s approach.