Philippines Clinic

Philippines

Mercy In Action has a long history of building and sponsoring free birth centers in the Philippines, as well as helping our sponsored birth center owners and local ministries with feeding programs and disaster response. Quality maternity care saves lives, and more than 17,500 babies have been born in the centers we sponsor in the Philippines, free of charge to the parents, with excellent outcomes.

Currently, Mercy In Action sponsors birth centers owned by Filipina midwives on three different islands. staffed by Filipina Licensed Midwives whom we support with finances, updated best-practice continuing education, and mentoring.

Mercy IN ACTION’S Sponsored Birthing HomeS

Mercy In Action's sponsored birth centers provide free maternity care for families living in poverty, with an emphasis on respectful and compassionate care, as well as evidence-based practices which support better outcomes for mothers and babies. In these birth centers, newborn and maternal statistics on survival of mothers and babies are four times better than the Philippines na’s national average. We attribute these excellent maternity care outcomes to high-quality, comprehensive maternity care that strives to remove common barriers to care and promotes shared decision-making, kindness, and safe birth practices.

Removing barriers to care

The Philippines has a high rate of neonatal and maternal mortality, and too many deliveries in this country still occur without the aid of a skilled birth attendant. For years, health experts have known that there are certain barriers to care that prevent mothers from seeking or obtaining a skilled birth attendant for their delivery. These barriers may include the inability to pay a birth attendant, lack of transportation to a facility, or even the availability of enough trained birth attendants for a community. To address the financial barriers, all care is free of charge in birth centers and clinics sponsored by Mercy In Action. Our sponsored birth centers serve pregnant women living on local garbage dumps, in resettlement camps for internally displaced persons (IDP), and in recovering disaster zones. Mercy In Action has built maternity waiting homes for women who must travel from far away in the days or weeks before giving birth, and provided food and housing help for our patients during times of disaster, also provided free of charge. To address the shortage of trained birth attendants, we provide capacity building among local licensed midwives, provide up-to-date skills trainings for local providers, and scholarship Filipina students through their midwifery education, culminating in a Bachelor of Science in Midwifery and a Philippines Regulatory Commission license in Midwifery.

More recently, the health experts have begun to discuss another barrier to care; lack of kindness to the mother, and lack of respect toward her and/or her partner and family. If a mother does not believe she will be treated well by a medical professional, she will not seek that professional's help. To address this barrier, we have built our foundational values and practices around principles of love, kindness, and respect for everyone. We work with our sponsored birth centers to created a sanctuary where women will feel safe and loved by their care providers. In fact, when we survey women who have delivered at our sponsored birth centers, and we ask "why did you come here?", the answer we would expect is "because it is free", but in fact, the answer we most often hear is "because you are kind.”Mission accomplished!

International Childbirth Initiative

All of our sponsored birth centers are required to be approved clinical sites of the International Childbirth Initiative (ICI), formerly the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative (IMBCI), and use this initiative as a model of care in our community. Mercy In Action has been invited to teach this model to hospitals, professional associations and clinical settings, in the Philippines and now with webinars in many countries. This is part of our effort to effect change not just in our own community, but around the world. 

The 12 Steps (summary version) to Safe and Respectful MotherBaby-Family Maternity Care

1. Treat every woman and newborn with compassion, respect and dignity, without physical, verbal or emotional abuse, providing culturally safe and culturally sensitive care that respects the individual’s customs, values, and rights to self–expression, informed choice and privacy.

2. Respect every woman’s right to access and receive non-discriminatory and free or at least affordable care throughout the continuum of childbearing, with the understanding that under no circumstances can a woman or baby be refused care or detained after birth for lack of payment.

3. Routinely provide the MotherBaby-Family maternity care model integrating the midwifery scope of practice and philosophy that can be practiced by all maternity care professionals in all settings and at all levels of care provision.

4. Acknowledge the mother’s right to continuous support during labour and birth and inform her of its benefits, and ensure that she receives such support from providers and companions of her choice.

5. Offer non-pharmacological comfort and pain relief measures during labour as safe first options. If pharmacological pain relief options are available and requested, explain their benefits and risks.

6. Provide evidence-based practices beneficial for the MotherBaby-Family throughout the entire childbearing continuum.

7. Avoid potentially harmful procedures and practices that have insufficient evidence of benefit outweighing risk for routine or frequent use in normal pregnancy, labour, birth, and the post-partum and neonatal period.

8. Implement measures that enhance wellness and prevent illness for the MotherBaby-Family, including good nutrition, clean water, sanitation, hygiene, family planning, disease and complications prevention and pre-and-post natal education.

9. Provide appropriate obstetric, neonatal, and emergency treatment when needed. Ensure that

staff are trained in recognizing (potentially) dangerous conditions and complications and in providing effective Step 10treatment or stabilization, and have established links for consultation and a safe and effective referral system.

10. Have a supportive human resource policy in place for recruitment and retention of dedicated staff, and ensure that staff are safe, secure, respected and enabled to provide good quality, collaborative, personalized care to women and newborns in a positive working environment.

11. Provide a continuum of collaborative care with all relevant health care providers, institutions, and

organizations with established plans and logistics for communication, consultation and referral between all Step 12 levels of care.

12. Achieve the 10 Steps of the revised Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (2018)-Protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding in facilities providing maternity services.

www.internationalchildbirth.com

Our Better World -
A culture of kindness, a childbirth of dignity