In Gear | Rotary in Southern New Zealand Issue 1 | Page 9

Organisation and UNICEF’s childbirth education
agreement, but the Government had no idea what to
do about it,” Gary says.

education and an updated manual, as well as a
professional translation, together with a new training
module: emergency clinical skills

To put the need into perspective, Gary says, such is
the paucity of training in Mongolia, frontline maternal
the team had another
healthcare workers had not previously had any
training even in basic
resuscitation
– education
Between 2013 and 2015, infant
that’s routinely available
mortality rates dropped 66 percent, to the general public in
while maternal deaths dived more New Zealand.

“So our timing in 2013 was absolutely perfect.”
As well as delivering training,
objective on that first visit: to
identify the best candidate
to travel to New Zealand to
experience first-hand the
practising of pre and postnatal healthcare in a first
world setting.

than 70 percent.

Mongolian midwife and healthcare manager at
Maternity Hospital No. 1 in Ulaanbaatar Amarjargal
Luvsandagva was that person, and spent a month
in North Otago and South Canterbury last year
experiencing the New Zealand maternal health system,
both in hospitals and the wider community, as part of
phase two of the project.
Gary says, as envisaged, the impact has been far greater
than Amarjargal simply learning English and travelling
to New Zealand – she’s now regularly attending training
seminars and maternal health conferences around the
world, including recently at Oxford University, England.
After the 2013 visit, the team knew they had unfinished
business in Mongolia, and the decision was made
to plan a second trip to deliver further childbirth

Phase three VTT became
a reality. In late May, Gary,
Julie, together with midwives Bev Te Huia, of Hastings,
and Sam Turner, president-elect of the Rotary Club
of Gisborne (Australia), and Melbourne’s Jo Palmer,
travelled to Mongolia to continue their mission to save
mothers and babies. With them, they took the revised
childbirth manual, the quality of which is such that
the Mongolian Ministry of Health has endorsed and
adopted it as the nationwide standardised maternal
and infant training curriculum.
Over three weeks, with support from Mongolia’s Rotary
District 3450, they trained more than 300 maternal
healthcare workers.
Delivered in three centres – the capital, Ulaanbaatar,
in the country’s centre, Darkhan in the north, and
Sainshand down near the Chinese border – training

From left, the Mongolian Vocational Training Team in traditional dress: Jo Palmer, Sam Turner, Gary Dennison, Julie Dockrill and Bev Te Huia.

Page 9