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MHTF & PLOS Medicine host a Special Event to Celebrate Year 2 of the Maternal Health Collection

On the 11th December, the MHTF and PLOS joined forces to celebrate the second Year of the Maternal Health Collection, highlighting the theme ‘maternal health is women’s health’ at the Harvard School of Public Health. The special event also featured the official launch of the Year 3 Call for Papers with a discussion on the latest theme for the Collection “integrating health care to meet the needs of the mother-infant pair” with PLOS Senior Editor, Dr. Rhona MacDonald.

Image Credit: Jack Zalium and Richard Basset
Image Credit: Jack Zalium and Richard Basset

Led by Dr. Ana Langer, Director of the MHTF, a selection of the Year 2 Collection authors presented and discussed their papers and the importance of their work for the improvement of maternal health worldwide. These authors included Dr. Nosakhare Orobaton, Dr. Cynthia Stanton and Dr. Suneth Agampodi.

A prominent topic of this discussion was addressed by Dr. Agampodi through his PLOS ONE paper, ‘Antenatal Depression in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka and the Factor Structure of the Sinhalese Version of Edinburgh Post Partum Depression Scale among Pregnant Women’. This initial conversation focused on working towards a coordinated consensus in order to treat ‘minor aliments’, such as nausea, vomiting and lower back ache, during pregnancy, primarily concentrating on best-practice treatment for Sri Lankan women.

Dr Nosa Orobaton, first author of the PLOS ONE paper, When Women Deliver with No One Present in Nigeria: Who, What, Where and So What?, then spoke of his findings and the resulting implications of Nigerian women who deliver alone, predicting that approximately 1 in 5 babies in Nigeria are born to unattended mothers, equating to around 1 million lone births in the country per year.

In relation to the recently published PLOS Medicine paper, Effect on Postpartum Hemorrhage of Prophylactic Oxytocin (10 IU) by Injection by Community Health Officers in Ghana: A Community-Based, Cluster-Randomized Trial, a final discussion was presented with Dr. Cynthia Stanton of JHSPH, who described their aims to discover whether community outreach workers could safely, effectively and feasibly administer oxytocin injections outside of health facilities.

This special event was concluded with the official announcement of the Year 3 theme by Rhona MacDonald, who discussed and answered questions on the timely importance of the new theme, “integrating health care to meet the needs of the mother-infant pair”, highlighting the effects of integrating maternal health services on the health of babies globally.

For further information on the MHTF-PLOS Collections, please click here.

Or for a full round-up of the event’s social media highlights, please read a Storify of the event here.

http://vimeo.com/82152726

Post written by Jennifer Horsley, Editorial Project Coordinator – PLOS Collections

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