Mama Rescue: Improving Maternal & Infant Health Outcomes in East Africa

Daphne is Spring's Senior Manager of Content Marketing. She's passionate about educating people on reproductive health and building communities to support people through their fertility journeys. See more articles from Daphne Thompson

Mama Rescue, an initiative partially funded by the Spring Together Foundation, spearheads efforts to combat the alarming rates of maternal and infant mortality in East Africa. Founded by Spring Fertility’s own co-founder, Dr. Peter Klatsky, Mama Rescue focuses on improving access to perinatal and emergency care so that moms and babies everywhere can have the healthiest and safest starts possible.

Maternal & Infant Mortality in East Africa:

East Africa faces a grave challenge in the form of high maternal and infant mortality rates. Inadequate access to quality perinatal and emergency care significantly contributes to this crisis. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 293,000 maternal deaths occur globally each year, with the majority happening in developing regions like East Africa. Additionally, an estimated 2.8 million newborn deaths occur annually, with a significant proportion happening within the first 24 hours of birth. These alarming statistics underscore the urgent need for initiatives which aim to improve healthcare access and save lives from being lost by preventable causes.

So, Mama Rescue started as an idea: how can we use local resources to address the 3 delays causing 75% of maternal deaths. Those delays are:

Too many women deliver at home after not receiving sufficient antenatal care, risking complications.
It takes too long for women with complications to reach emergency care.
When women reach the hospital, the hospital is too often unprepared, causing further delays to ensue.

The Birth of Mama Rescue:

Mama Rescue was founded by Dr. Peter Klatsky, a fertility specialist and the co-founder of Spring Fertility. Driven by his passion for reproductive health and his first-hand experience witnessing the challenges faced by mothers in East Africa, Dr. Klatsky established Mama Rescue with the primary goal of providing enhanced access to perinatal and emergency care services for expectant mothers and newborns, in an effort to stop preventable infant and maternal deaths in childbirth.

Mama Rescue was created to help women who are pregnant access important and skilled care for their obstetric deliveries.

Dr. Klatsky shares that Mama Rescue was created to “help women who are pregnant access important and skilled care for their obstetric deliveries.” Of the foundation’s care model, “women who attend four antenatal care visits during their pregnancy are then able to get a voucher for a free ride to a health center, where they can see a midwife when they are in labor. If they have complications during that labor, there is a second part to it which provides emergency transport for free for women with obstructed labor, hemorrhage, or other obstetric emergency so that they can get to a hospital where they can get advanced and emergent obstetric care, including cesarean sections.”

Empowering Communities & Saving Lives:

Mama Rescue employs a multi-faceted approach to decrease maternal and infant mortality rates. By partnering with local healthcare facilities and organizations, Mama Rescue establishes a network of accessible care for pregnant women. These partnerships ensure that expectant mothers have access to skilled birth attendants, emergency transportation, and life-saving medical interventions during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period.

Moreover, Mama Rescue conducts training programs for healthcare providers, equipping them with the necessary knowledge and skills to handle obstetric emergencies effectively. This capacity-building aspect helps enhance the overall quality of care provided in East African communities.

Dr. Klatsky reflects that in 2012, “I was able to join some amazing colleagues who were teaching midwives and other obstetric care providers techniques and tools to prevent maternal mortality in Western Uganda… at the end of the training, one of the midwives explained to me that over the course of our training, somebody had lost twins. And she had lost her pregnancy not because they didn’t identify a problem in her pregnancy, but that when they identified that problem, they couldn’t help the woman get to the hospital. It took over 24 hours of a woman in labor before they could mobilize the resources in their community to help this woman move from a rural health center to a hospital.”

To further reach remote areas, Mama Rescue utilizes innovative technology such as mobile health applications. These applications provide crucial information, education, and support to expectant mothers, helping them make informed decisions regarding their health and the well-being of their newborns.

Impact & Success Stories:

Since its inception, Mama Rescue has made significant strides in improving maternal and infant health in East Africa. By strengthening healthcare systems and promoting community engagement, the initiative has successfully reduced maternal and infant mortality rates in numerous regions. Dr. Klatsky reminds us, “It’s not super complex medical care that gets in the way of helping people. It’s delays in accessing skilled obstetric care.”

Mama Rescue's interventions have saved countless lives and empowered communities. Through the provision of emergency obstetric care, the initiative has effectively tackled complications during childbirth, such as hemorrhage and eclampsia. By bridging the gaps in healthcare access, Mama Rescue has ensured that more women have access to life-saving interventions, resulting in improved maternal and neonatal outcomes. To-date, Mama Rescue has facilitated over 20,000 antenatal care visits, over 3,400 transports for labor and delivery, and over 2,700 transports for emergency care services.

How to Help:

Dr. Klatsky explains that for every Spring pregnancy, we make a donation to Mama Rescue on behalf of Spring and our patients: “That donation enables two women to get emergency transport to a health center, as well as over ten women to get access to a skilled provider during her pregnancy.” Spring Fertility has a vision that anyone who wants a family should be able to safely have one; it is so gratifying to be able to couple our patients’ successes in the US with improved safety and success for women abroad who are trying to build their families without the same resources.

Furthermore, at many of Spring’s educational and community events in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, donation-based ticket proceeds generously given by our guests go directly to supporting Mama Rescue.

If you would like to join our efforts to help women access skilled obstetric and emergency care to stop preventable deaths from occurring, you can donate directly to our foundation partner, Babies and Mothers Alive.