Yet another casualty of the pandemic has been the visits by our UK midwives to our partner countries, to deliver our skills sharing workshops.
Thanks to the hard work by local community, Africa has not been hit as hard by Covid as the West. Deaths are a fraction of those in Europe and the US. This has been attributed in part, to the lessons learned from Ebola. So the position now, is that unlike when Ebola was ravaging their countries, we cannot travel because of the risk of taking Covid to Sierra Leone and Liberia. So we had to think outside the box and use the latest IT resources to keep in touch and offer what can be shared over the airwaves.
LFAM has facilitated four Zoom meetings, two with Liberia and two with Sierra Leone. Each of the zoom meetings was attended by 20 midwives in Africa and a number of UK midwives from across the country, some of whom had been to Africa with LFAM so it was very much like a family reunion. Experiences and advice were exchanged and challenges addressed. All the meetings were very positive.
The Zoom meetings will continue until LFAM teams are able to return, and given the arrival of the vaccine for frontline NHS staff, it is hoped that we can at least start thinking of when we can travel.
Below are some images from our workshops:
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