Strengthening Emergency Care Programme

We want to ensure healthcare workers feel confident in managing emergencies in pregnant mothers, newborn babies and children. For effective healthcare improvement there has to be an efficient healthcare system with well trained staff at every level from hospital to village.

With our projects partner ALSG (Advanced Life Support Group), we have expertise in training doctors, nurses and other health workers in countries where there is extreme poverty.

Our Strengthening Emergency Care programme (SEC) is a sustainable whole system programme for the emergency care of pregnant women, newborn infants and children in countries where there is extreme poverty.

This means that we try to improve healthcare by looking at every stage of a pregnant woman, new born baby or child's care during a medical emergency.

Advanced Life Support Group Logo The programme has been developed by MCAI and The Advanced Life Support Group (ALSG). ALSG is a medical education charity that has over 19 years’ experience in the development of training packages and education systems in the UK and in 25 countries around the world.

There are also two others partners, supported by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) the in-country Department of Health and the World Health Organisation.

Summary of SEC programme (PDF, 1.17MB)

Concept behind the programme

Whilst acknowledging the importance of maternal and child health care improvements through primary prevention, inevitably emergency situations will arise that may be poorly managed, especially in the early hours of their presentation, leading to avoidable maternal and child deaths.

SEC addresses these issues by:

establishing a sustainable training programme for health care professionals and community workers in emergency care for mothers, neonates and children. This is a clinical training programme as a public health intervention strategy. The training course is called EMNCH – Emergency Maternal, Neonatal and Child Healthcare
ensuring the availability of essential drugs, medical and surgical supplies and equipment, renovating existing hospital premises and
making the “emergency chain of care” functional by developing communication and transportation for the critically ill or injured.

The training programme is sustainable as local health care workers have been trained as Instructors to extend the programme across the country.

Introducing SEC programme into a new country (PDF, 209KB)