Mulago is most probably the busiest hospital in the world. According to the last statistics, in the maternity ward, over 33.000 babies per year are born here. This means an overage of 90 babies each day.
Mulago it's the referral hospital for many small surrounding villages as well as the national referral hospital of Uganda. Most of the mothers that come to Mulago from outside Kampala are coming from very poor reality where there is no education or preparation for welcoming a new life.
"Care of the new born" was conceived in order to give a basic knowledge to the mothers after they give birth, to prevent irreversible mistake ( new born death by chocking or bleeding are very common within young mothers) and basic instruction on how to breastfeed , how to take care of the baby , how to behave within the hospital premises. The video it's divided in two main sessions, the first one dedicated to the new born in general and the second one more specific to the pre born babies.
The video is completely in Luganda, the local language of the Buganda , the southern region of Uganda and subtitle in English . The idea behind the project is to translate it into all the other languages spoken in the country ( 12 institutional languages) and reach thought a distribution in health centre, religious community and so on areas where a direct consultation with a paediatricians is most difficult or impossible
The project was realized without founding and with mainly the cooperation with William Ranieri who filmed and edit and Dr Flavia who conceived the idea and wrote the script, over a period of a couple of months.
Hopefully this video will contribute to reduce the very high percentage of maternal and new born death in Uganda very often caused by very simple mistake that could have been avoided with an appropriate education.
William Ranieri