IMPLEMENTING THE IMBCI 10 STEPS: DEMONSTRATION SITES
AND MOTHERBABY NETWORKS (MBnets)
Since its creation in 2008, the IMBCI has attracted increasing worldwide attention among doctors, midwives, nurses, doulas, their associations and the facilities where they work. In all global regions of the world, a number of hospitals, birth centers, and health care professionals have started to implement the IMBCI 10 Steps on their premises or in their individual practices.
For example, in North America, a maternity hospital located in a small town in a rural area of Quebec (Pavillon des Naissances, Hôpital Brome Missisquoi Perkins, Cowansville, Centre de Santé et Services Sociaux La Pommeraie) has changed its prenatal childbirth education courses to encourage normal birth and given additional training to all health care professionals (doctors and nurses) on the physiology of birth, on non-pharmacological pain relief and comfort measures. It has written a common-based-knowledge document and revised its policies and protocols in order to comply with the IMBCI 10 Steps. In Brazil, Hospital Sofia Feldman in Belo Horizonte--a maternity hospital staffed with nurse-midwives and located in a poor area of this major city--has become a model of humanized birth by implementing the 10 Steps, greatly enhancing its quality of care. In Austria, managers of the Department of Ob/Gyn in a maternity hospital called Community Hospital Feldbach observed that intervention rates—including the cesarean rate--have diminished after the IMBCI was introduced. In the Philippines, Mercy in Action, a birthing center staffed with midwives and serving families living in a vulnerable context has become an IMBCI teaching center for student midwives from over the world. They even succeeded in implementing all 10 IMBCI Steps while attending pregnant women for prenatal and postpartum care and helping them give birth in a tent in a zone totally devastated by the 2013 typhoon, with no electricity and no running water. Clearly, if the IMBCI 10 Steps can be fully followed in a disaster zone, they can be implemented anywhere! IMBCI has contributed to improving midwifery training and public health education: midwifery students and students in public health have done practicums in sites using the IMBCI 10 Steps. In addition, several grass-roots organizations promoting humanization of birth – like the Bangalore Birth Network in India, have been actively working on implementing the IMBCI as a model of maternity care in their community - see MBnets. |
Pavillon des Naissances, Hôpital Brome Missisquoi Perkins, Cowansville, Centre de Santé et Services Sociaux La Pommeraie
Hospital Sofia Feldman in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
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