Dear CHIFA Colleagues,
As part of the Liberian National Task Sharing programme, 4 up-to-date and evidence-based handbooks have been produced for use in rural public hospitals (1 in advanced obstetric care, 1 in advanced neonatal care and 2 in advanced paediatric care). As well as in Liberia, these handbooks are also relevant to all doctors and health practitioners in other low resource and emergency settings and so we are planning initially to ensure that copies are provided to all hospitals, training institutions, universities and the medical school in Liberia where we hope they will help with the provision of safe and effective care for all newborn, infants, children, pregnant women and adolescent girls and help reduce the high maternal, neonatal and child mortality and major morbidity rates in Liberia. Our hope is that other low resource countries and emergency settings will also benefit as soon as possible from these books.
All 4 handbooks are now available on the MCAI website as book-marked PDFs so that as many other organisations or individuals, especially in low resource settings or zones where there are armed conflicts or other emergencies, can download them. They range in size from 5 to 18 MB each.
Here is the link to the front page of the MCAI website for the download of any of the 4 handbooks: https://www.mcai.org.uk/
Please can I ask you to send the link above to your own contacts in other low resource or emergency settings and if you do, please can you let me or Dr Sarah Collins at LSTHM (The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) know so that we can keep a record of who and where they have reached. Sarah has very kindly agreed to volunteer to document the distribution of the handbooks and her email address is included here: sarah.collins1@student.lshtm.ac.uk
Many thanks already to those highly experienced authors and editors who have written these handbooks in a completely voluntary capacity.
MCAI is the publisher of all 4 books and the electronic versions are free of charge to download. Where practical and affordable the printed versions will also be distributed free of charge to as many health workers as possible working in in low resource and emergency settings. This is dependent on the funds needed for printing and distribution and MCAI is working on this with the UN and other partners. If there are any ways you can help identify support for printing and distribution, please let me know and we will pursue them.
Yours sincerely,
Professor David Southall OBE, MD, FRCPCH
Honorary Medical Director MCAI, 1 Columba Court, Laide IV22 2NL, UK
0044 (0) 7710 674003
0044 (0) 7710 674003 and +44 (0)7944 632011
WhatsApp +44 7944 632011
www.mcai.org.uk <http://www.mcai.org.uk/>, http://books.mcai.org.uk <http://books.mcai.org.uk/> and www.ihpi.org <http://www.ihpi.org/>
Registered as a SCIO (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation) No. SC043467
Director, MCAI Liberia, Office within WHO in the UN One Building, and Field Office, House 13, Phebe Hospital, Liberia Enterprise Number 051730402 <tel:051730402>
CHIFA profile: David Southall is a retired Professor of Paediatrics and Honorary Medical Director of the Maternal and Child Health Advocacy International, MCAI, in the UK.
(www.mcai.org.uk) He is also on the board of the International Child Health Group. director AT mcai.org.uk
