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F, V & V inOBGyn, 2010, 2 (4): 217 Who’s who MRC Maternal and Infant Health Care Strategies Research Unit R. C. PattinsOn Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Klinikala Building, University of Pretoria, PO Box 667, Pretoria, 0001. the Medical Research Council Maternal and infant the unit has established two national survey sys- Health Care strategies Research unit was established tems in perinatal care and child care and has devel- in partnership with the University of Pretoria in 1997 oped the database and does the analysis of the data under the directorship of Professor Bob Pattinson. for the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths although most of the original research team has in south africa. the three national survey reports moved to new positions often in other countries, new (Saving Mothers, Saving Babies and Saving Chil- researchers have joined and the research mandate dren) have clearly identified the major diseases caus- upon which the unit was built has remained the ing maternal, perinatal and child deaths and also the same. major health system failures. the unit has also de- Our research mandate has been to develop health veloped a maternal near miss audit system, the basis strategies at primary and secondary care levels for of which is being used in the WHO Global survey mothers and infants by seeking saleable solutions. of maternal morbidity in 27 countries throughout the By seeking we mean performing research; by world. a neonatal near miss audit system developed saleablewe mean solutions that are acceptable to all by the unit is currently being tested. namely women, health care workers and health ad- initially the unit was involved in performing mul- ministrators; and by solutionswe mean health strate- ticentre randomized trials on common problems gies that have been developed to solve the problems such as preterm labour, pre-eclampsia and eclampsia identified. and managing normal term labour, to develop effec- Bob Pattinson at work 217 tive guidelines suitable for south africa. However, Postnatal Care, Essential steps in Managing Obstet- as the health problems have become more apparent ric Emergencies, and neonatal Resuscitation and due to information provided by the survey systems, Care of the neonate. these packages have been in- the unit has concentrated firstly on designing and im- tegrated and are being tested in Mpumalanga plementing effective interventions and now more re- Province with the use of a specially developed infor- cently in developing mechanisms to take the mation file for pregnant women and their families. interventions to scale. an example of this has been Currently the unit is developing a maternal, perinatal the developing Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) im- and child health care situational leadership develop- plementations programme, testing it by running clus- ment programme to empower the health care ter randomized trials in three provinces, then providers in district hospitals to implement appro- implementing it nationally. there has been a signif- priate interventions. icant impact of the programme; the perinatal survey Health strategies researched in this manner have system has demonstrated a thirty percent reduction been implemented directly by the national and in neonatal deaths of babies between 1.0-1.99kg in Provincial Departments of Health as guidelines for sites after the introduction of KMC to those sites. primary and secondary health levels in their areas. the KMC implementation training package has been in this way, workable, affordable solutions to essen- adapted for and used in Ghana, Malawi, tanzania, tial national health problems in the field of maternal, and indonesia. the unit has developed and tested perinatal and child health have resulted in benefit for other quality improvement packages namely Basic women and children. antenatal Care, Basic intrapartum care, Essential 218 F, V & V inOBGyn