NICHE International is a small UK-registered medical charity working alongside healthcare professionals and partner organisations to improve the care of newborn babies in resource-scarce settings.
Our work focuses on practical neonatal education. The Neonatal Care Course covers essential aspects of care during the first weeks of a baby’s life, including resuscitation at birth, breastfeeding, skin-to-skin care, keeping babies warm and recognising and managing illness.
The course has been developed for use in settings where resources may be limited, using practical approaches and simple equipment. NICHE International has worked alongside healthcare professionals in Cameroon, Liberia, Zimbabwe, India and Uganda, forming long-term partnerships and adapting training to local circumstances.
But for NICHE, delivering a training course is only part of the story.
Building skills that can continue locally
A central part of NICHE International’s approach is supporting local healthcare professionals to become instructors themselves.
By developing local instructors, encouraging peer-to-peer practice and supporting continuing professional development, skills and knowledge can be shared with more colleagues and become embedded within local healthcare services.
This is important to NICHE because sustainable training is not about arriving, delivering a course and leaving. It is about working alongside local colleagues over time, supporting local ownership and creating the conditions for training to continue independently. NICHE describes this approach as a route towards training self-sufficiency, with local faculties eventually able to deliver both the Neonatal Care Course and instructor development themselves.
A recent journey by Grace in Cameroon shows what that ongoing support can look like in practice.
Returning to Mbam
Last year, Grace delivered neonatal training at the health centre in Mbam, a remote village in the North West Region of Cameroon. You can read about her first trip at Neonatal Care Course in a remote village in Cameroon – NICHE International. This month, she made the long journey back to visit the health centre, see how the team were getting on and take them a baby manikin so that staff can continue practising newborn resuscitation skills.
Reaching Mbam is no straightforward journey. Grace first travelled overnight by bus, followed by four-wheel drive and motorbike. On this visit, difficult road conditions made the journey even more challenging. The vehicle broke down in the mud and Grace continued by motorbike for around eight hours.
The photographs she sent give a glimpse of both the journey and the health centre she was returning to.
Communication presents another challenge. There is no phone network in Mbam, so Grace had to climb a nearby hill to find enough signal to send an update and share the photographs from her visit. Behind those extraordinary practical details is something very important: follow-up.
Training does not end when the course finishes
Clinical skills need to be practised and refreshed. Providing the health centre with a baby manikin means staff have an opportunity to continue practicing newborn resuscitation after formal training has ended. Grace’s return also gives colleagues an opportunity to discuss how things are progressing and to maintain the connection established during the original training.
This reflects NICHE International’s wider approach. The charity aims not only to provide neonatal training, but also to support healthcare professionals to share knowledge, practise together and develop the local teaching capacity needed for training to continue in the longer term. The charity’s Trustees’ Report identifies training local instructors and encouraging peer-to-peer skills practice as central to making its programmes sustainable.
NICHE also recognises that learning is collaborative. Healthcare professionals working in their own communities bring knowledge and experience that visiting instructors do not have. The charity’s approach therefore emphasises partnership, mutual learning and locally led solutions rather than one-way teaching.
Grace’s visit to Mbam is a simple but powerful example of that principle in action: returning, listening, supporting practice and helping locally led neonatal education continue.
Supporting NICHE International
NICHE International is a small charity supported by volunteers, fundraising and charitable donations. Its volunteer instructors include doctors, nurses and resuscitation officers with clinical and teaching experience, who give their time to support neonatal education and instructor development. Donations help NICHE continue working alongside healthcare professionals and partner organisations, supporting training, instructor development and the practical resources needed to maintain skills.
If you would like to support NICHE International, you can donate, fundraise for the charity, share its work with others or help raise awareness of its approach to sustainable newborn care education.
Find out more about donating to NICHE International here:
Thank you to Grace and to the healthcare team in Mbam for sharing this update and for their continuing commitment to newborn care.