The Neonatal Care Course was originally written by Maternal & Childhealth Advocacy International and https://www.alsg.org/ and has stood the test of time well. Before NICHE International was set up, some of us were volunteers with MCAI and taught the course in Gambia in 2014 as well as Cameroon in 2015.
The Strengthening Emergency Care (SEC) committee of ALSG keeps an eye on the course content and provides the educational governance for the course and we have certainly added things to it over the years as a result of changes in World Health Organisation policy, relevant new clinical studies or feedback from the learners. We have kept it as practical as possible and ensured that it is easy for local instructors to teach in their turn.
Educationally though, it was in need of a bit of a revamp. It was very lecture heavy with no e-learning site in a world where most healthcare professionals in the world now have access to the internet at least intermittently during their working week. Alistair, Cath and Julia have been restructuring and updating the course for the past few months and on 4th and 5th January, trustees, instructors, friends and interested parties gathered together in Calderdale Hospital to put the new course to the test.

The weekend got off to a great start with lots of very enthusiastic learners and the timings working out better than we had feared. But then it snowed. This is not really a problem we have in Uganda and Cameroon (although we have had courses threatened in Liberia by heavy rains making the red laterite soil roads impassable). All trains to and from Halifax were cancelled because of a fallen tree, no bus replacement services were allowed to run and emergency services were busy rescuing people from their cars overnight all around Halifax. So we reluctantly did the sensible thing and cancelled day 2.