March 3, 2023, Ashgabat – Strengthening primary health care and providing quality mother and child health services are among the key health priorities of Turkmenistan. UNICEF and the Ministry of Health and Medical Industry are working together to increase the quality of these services through optimization of home visiting by health professionals. This service has an important role in early detection and treatment of complications and saving lives of mothers and children.
In 2022, UNICEF helped to develop the new standards for home visiting services to young children and the first in Turkmenistan digital application for Home Visitor. In practice this means that home visiting services provided by health-care professionals will now include prevention and counselling tools, which will contribute directly to improved mother and child health and nutrition outcomes, as well as early detection of developmental difficulties. With the new standards and application installed on tablet-computers, mothers and children will receive the best care from the very first days.
During 28 February – 3 March 2023 all health professionals of the three selected health care facilities were trained to use the new application for Home Visitor. This pioneer group will test the application in the coming months before its nation-wide expansion at primary health care level. ///UNICEF Turkmenistan, 3 March 2023