Women Making a Difference

Dr. Sudha Basnet, Nepal

Dr. Sudha Basnet Source: JHPIEGO

Pediatrician Trivubhan University Teaching Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal

Despite dramatic reductions in infant mortality in Nepal in the past decade, newborn health is an emerging priority for the government of Nepal. For Dr. Sudha Basnet, it has always been an important part of her work as a pediatrician. While she works at Trivubhan University in the capital of Kathmandu, she has been active in introducing and expanding international best practices on newborn care in Nepal – a country challenged to help and save newborns, who are often born at home without assistance from a skilled birth attendant (SBA).

Nepal has committed to training thousands of providers to address this problem. Sudha helped review the SBA training materials (developed with technical assistance from the USAID-supported ACCESS program) to ensure the content was appropriate for Nepal and consistent with international best practices. She then helped prepare trainers to manage newborn problems, including neonatal resuscitation. Sudha also helped develop newborn care tools to help training sites improve quality of services.

In 2007, Sudha dedicated time outside of her work responsibilities to travel to SBA training sites to support trainers teaching newborn care and resuscitation in Biratnagar and Bharatpur. In addition, she led the development of a manual on essential newborn care for primary health care workers and helped ACCESS staff train midlevel providers to provide this type of care in the far-western district of Kanchanpur.

Sudha's commitment to improving newborn health in Nepal helps to integrate newborn care into national training systems capacity and also works to spread appropriate knowledge and skills to community-level providers. With the efforts, expertise, and enthusiasm of Sudha and others, newborns in Nepal will certainly have a healthier future.

Story provided by JHPIEGO, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University

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