Hi, it's Kristen here with LDS Charities. Today we're here with Dean Walker, who is the manager of the maternal and newborn care initiative. And we are in the Humanitarian Center, and there are so many cool things that happen in this building. If you want to learn more, feel free to come get a tour. They'd love to have you. Dean, thanks for being here with me today. Glad to be here. I'm so excited to learn about everything you brought. We have lots of cool training materials that we donate. So why don't we start by talking about Neo-Natalie? OK, so one of our main training programs for LDS Charities, for our maternal newborn care initiative, is resuscitation. It's called Helping Babies Breathe. Ten percent of all the babies born do not breathe at birth. No matter where you are? Wherever they're at, whatever country they live in. And so we want to make sure that those babies survive. So as a baby is born, usually what we do is, we will rub vigorously the baby and stimulate it so that it will start breathing. So that will take care of most babies, and most of them will start breathing on their own. But again, 10 percent do not breathe on their own. And so what we do is, we have this simulator. We can see here, we can actually simulate chest rise and we can simulate a heartbeat. You can feel the heartbeat along there. On the umbilical cord right there. That's so cool that it will do all that for you. And so what we do is, we can simulate, actually, how to do the resuscitation. So this is what we call a resuscitator, or a bag and mask. We take the mask over the mouth and the nose, and we put it down on the baby, and we get chest rise. So when you can see the chest rising, that's when you know you're doing it right? Right. So this is the way they can practice. So this becomes a library item in the hospital, and all the birth attendants--those that are new--and then ongoing training can take place so that their skills are good in case it becomes a case where they need it. And I imagine this can help them with their confidence so much, to be able to practice before doing it on a real baby in a real situation. Exactly. And that all, you were telling me, is all the golden minute. You have 60 seconds to get that baby breathing. So it's a quick, on-your-feet thinking situation. So this is a little different. Tell me about Preemie-Natalie and what we simulate here. OK, so we have smaller babies. You can see this one is quite a bit smaller than the baby over here. And these babies have a hard time eating because they're very weak. They're smaller. And so they're not breastfeeding properly. So we have a couple options that we can do. One is, we express breast milk, and we actually have a simulator that will simulate that so the birth attendants can practice expressing. And then we take the milk and we put it in a cup. And we can take the baby and hold it and take the cup right up to their lip, and then they will lap the milk. Naturally? Just lap it up? Their tongue will come out and they'll actually lap that milk. And so that's one way we can actually get them to start eating. If they're really weak and that isn't working well, then what we do is, we insert a tube in through the nose or mouth which goes down into the stomach. Now, this mannequin actually has a stomach in it. And so we can use a stethoscope and listen and see if we've actually got the tube not in the lungs, but in the stomach. And so we put the tube in, and then we hook it to a syringe.

And then we take the expressed breast milk and we pour it into the syringe, and through gravity it will go down and then down into the stomach. Now, the whole goal here is that the baby will become strong enough by eating this way that eventually it can breastfeed. That's amazing. Again, to be able to practice this on a mannequin and make sure you're getting in the right place every time, I'm sure is invaluable for the people getting this kind of training. Absolutely. So this last one, Dr. Draper had talked to me about the Mama-Natalie. So what kind of program does this go with? So we have another program called Helping Mothers Survive. And so the issue here is that if the baby survives and we have the mother die, then we're really in danger of the baby dying also. And so it's really important that we cover maternal care also. So this is called Helping Mothers Survive. This is a mannequin that you actually strap onto you, and so you become part of the mannequin. The baby can actually fit inside here, and we can actually deliver the baby.

The leading cause of death for mothers is bleeding after birth, so the hemorrhaging. So this person that's holding the simulator, there's a reservoir inside here, and we can actually have a flow of blood or water--we use water for this, colored--and we can practice doing that. Now, one of the leading causes here is that the placenta needs to be delivered, and this actually has a placenta, and we deliver the placenta in the doctor's practice. If even one piece is left over, right, I mean, that causes all kinds of hemorrhaging. So they practice and know how to know if the whole thing's been there. And delivering it. And they examine it after it's been delivered. So this is a great device, gives people the opportunity to practice. And this is a newer program for LDS Charities, right? Absolutely. So we've just really seen the benefit of training on both to make sure everybody's healthy and everybody's surviving after birth. Awesome. So I know we have also some training materials that you leave with them in-country as well to help train other people. Yes. So we have five different programs. We have everything from an advanced course on teaching resuscitation and working with people worldwide on resuscitation, to our basic resuscitation course, Helping Babies Breathe. And then we have the Essential Care for Small Babies. These are items for training for people so that they can know how to work with this little baby. And then we have Helping Mothers Survive, which we've talked about, bleeding after birth. And then we have Essential Care for Every Baby, which deals with 11 key things that need to be done after the baby is born. Because we get the baby breathing, and it's strong and everything seems to be OK ... Your work's not done yet. There are still some things. Yeah, so it deals with everything from vitamin K to proper weight, proper temperature, keeping the baby warm, all of those types of things. Now, we don't actually make all these materials, correct? So who do we partner with in order to have these awesome mannequins? We have partnered with, as part of a global development alliance, Laerdal Global Health. It's an organization out of Norway, but they are producing these items in China, and they have provided all of these items for us so that we can actually do this training. They're an unbelievable organization, and we're so grateful to partner with them. This is amazing. Like I said, this is just so much to know. So for us to bring these in-country, leave them with them, let them practice so they can make sure that they feel confident in those situations, I think is amazing. It is. Dean, thank you so much for showing me this today. If you guys would like to know more about the maternal and newborn care initiative, feel free to visit our website ldscharities.org.