The Mimin project promotes good hygiene in hospitals and communities in Benin in order to prevent maternal and neonatal infections. The project provides training for healthcare students and professionals and improves institutional infrastructure to enable high-quality education as well as infection surveillance in hospitals.
To achieve our goals,
we are planning new training modules that will improve the hygiene training of all healthcare professionals:
- 1) a module for the continuing education of professionals already in employment
- 2) a module applying the Internationalization at Home e-learning approach to provide joint training for midwifery and nursing students in Benin and Finland.
- we are implementing an improved hospital hygiene and infection prevention programme at six pilot hospitals, including strengthening the online technical platform for infection surveillance.
- we are establishing a new national reference laboratory that enables the diagnosis and monitoring of pathogens causing blood-borne infections.
- we are piloting awareness campaigns in disadvantaged communities to improve good hygiene practices in the care of new mothers and newborns.
- the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the Ministry of Health have been involved in project planning from the beginning, and thus our results enable evidence-based decision-making in planning the new health and education policies.