Hospital Municipal Villa Fundacion

Hospital Municipal Villa Fundacion (HMVF) is a small community hospital that serves an estimated population of 20,000 living in a resource-poor community outside of Bani, Dominican Republic. World Connect started working in partnership with HMVF in 2009 through its Infante Sano program. Staff and patients from HMVF identified that one of the pressing needs felt by women in the community was the need to improve services for labor and delivery at the hospital. While HMVF had the capacity for women to deliver at their facility, many women opted to seek services farther away at the larger hospital citing a lack of quality services at the hospital in their community. Women who should have had natural & normal births at HMVF, their community hospital, were being referred to Bani and often ending up with an unnecessary c-section. Traveling to the larger hospital led to overcrowding at the larger facilities and put women and their newborns in harm's way by adding delays for care during emergencies. With support from World Connect, HMVF sought to improve the quality of services for women during labor and delivery and began an intervention at the hospital in August 2009. 

The project focused on the principles of humanizing birth by encouraging improved doctor-patient relationships, increasing decision-making powers for women during labor and delivery, exclusive and immediate breastfeeding, and increased social-emotional support for women during labor and delivery. Members from the surrounding community and clinics were added to the hospital’s quality improvement committee to ensure that patients’ voices were heard. By making the connections to how women are treated during this extremely vulnerable time, HMVF worked to improve the quality of healthcare services offered at their facility, including appropriate referrals to the larger hospital in Bani. The project at HMVF was also unique in that the training model incorporated more on-the-job-training with national experts which allowed staff to apply their knowledge with expert guidance in real life situations. 

After the first year of the intervention, staff at HMVF have reported more confident in their clinical abilities to diagnose and deliver babies, and deliveries at HMVF have increased significantly. The number of deliveries increased from 2008 (24 births), to over 50 births taking place August to November 2009; double the number from the year prior to intervention in just four months! Staff are also now delivering important health workshops to patients while they wait to be seen, like the one here on reproductive health rights. There have been major improvements in staff satisfaction and patient satisfaction. In interviews with patients after delivering at HMVF, almost all women have said they would come back to the hospital to deliver again and that they would recommend HMVF to their friends and family.

HMVF has been granted with the Charlotte Daniel "Champions of Change" Award in recognition of their early success turning the hospital into a Center of Excellence for maternal and child health. World Connect has also awarded HMVF with a World Connect Grant in 2010 to continue its great work and ensure that more women have access to labor & delivery care that is medically sound, humane and empowering. Below is a photo of some of HMVF's dedicated team. 

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