Makatleho Masoabi, IYCN Country Coordinator, shares her experience with pretesting Lesotho’s new infant and young child feeding training curriculum.
Thithidi, a Nutrition Officer at the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and Makatleho at the workshop.
In April, I worked with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to pretest Lesotho’s new infant and young child feeding training curriculum for health workers. More than 20 trainers from health facilities in all ten districts of the country joined us for a training workshop in the mountains of Pitseng—about a two-hour drive from the capitol city of Maseru.
We asked the trainers—mostly nurses, one doctor, and a few national stakeholders—to take turns facilitating counseling role-plays, demonstrating good breastfeeding techniques, and leading other activities. During each session of the week-long course, participants gave feedback to help us make future training workshops appropriate for health workers in their districts.
Participants at the pretest training workshop in Lesotho, April 2009.
Now, the IYCN team is updating the curriculum based on participants’ feedback. It’s our final step in assisting the government in developing the course. I am excited to help the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare launch the curriculum for training health workers across the country soon.
One of the participants, Victor Inegbedion, a physician, told me that the training is urgently needed in the district hospital where he just started working. After seeing so many children with chronic malnutrition in his first few weeks, the training came at the right time for him to learn more about how he can offer better support for infant feeding.
“Teaching is a passion for me,” Victor told me. “I am eager to use the curriculum and share everything that I have learned with other doctors and nurses at my hospital.”
Learn more about IYCN activities in Lesotho.
Photos: Christine Demmelmaier
Date: Jul 4, 2009 | Category: Updates from the field