From Ebola Survivor to COVID Warrior: Dr. Craig Spencer on the Pandemic’s Lingering Threat

Dr. Craig Spencer

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Marianne O’Hare : Welcome to Conversations on Health Care with Mark Masselli and
Margaret Flinter, a show where we speak to the top thought leaders
in health innovation, health policy, care delivery, and the great minds
who are shaping the hea lth ca re of the future.

This week Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Craig Spencer , Director
of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at New York
Presbyterian / Columbia University Medical Center. Also , on the board
of Doctors Without Borders . Dr. Spencer worked on t he front lines
treating Ebola in West Africa , contracting and surviving that deadly
disease , and he's also been sending dispatches from inside New York's
emergency rooms and ICUs as the COVID - 19 pandemic ha s raged on.

Lori Robertson also checks in , Managin g Editor of F act C heck.org , looks
at misstatements spoken about health policy in the public domain ,
separating the fake from the facts. And we end with a bright idea
that's improving health and well being in everyday lives.

If you have comments, email us at [email protected] or find us on
Facebook, Twitter, or wherever you listen to podcast s . And y ou can
also he a r us by asking Alexa to play the program .

Now stay tuned for our interview with Dr. Craig Spencer here on
Conversations on Health Care .

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Mark Masselli: We’re speaking today with Dr. Craig Spencer , Director of Global
Health in Emergency M edicine at New York Presbyterian / Columbia
University's Medical Center. He 's also Assistant Professor of
Emergency Medi cine and P opulation and Family Health at Columbia
University Medical Center. He's delivered care in a number of global
settings including West Africa during the Ebola outbreak, a disease he
also contracted and reco vered from during the epidemic.

Margaret F linter : Dr. Spencer's global health work is focused on securing human rights
and access to medical care for those in the most vulnerable parts of
our world. He's on the board of directors of Doctors Without Borders,
and he's a contributing wri ter for the o nline publication ‘M edium ’ . Dr.
Spenc er, welcome to Conversations on H ealth C are today.

Dr. Craig Spencer : Thank you for the invitation. And thank you for having me.

Mark Masselli : Yeah, and you know we're so moved by your writing and the work
that you've done, obviously delivered health care all around the
world , in war zones that have been devastated by epidemics. And it's
been a year since you started sharing your really human dispatches
from inside New York's emergency r ooms as the pandemic unfolded ,

Dr. Craig Spencer

w h ich was, I think, fair to say its own type of w ar zone. And here we
are, we're a year out . COVID - 19 death toll has just really been an
unthinkable number ; close to half a million Americans are dead , and
millions around the globe. But there' s also some good news , one
hopes , which is th e vaccines are being deployed and cas e numbers
seem to be dropping. Y ou say you're still seeing emergenc y rooms
filled . We certainly see what's happening out o n the West Coast, and
in parts of the country. And you're also exper iencing patients for
which the vaccines can ’t help, as they're in the emergency rooms
situation. I'm wondering if you can just share with our listeners what
you're seeing now, how does it compare to those early days of the
pandemic .

Dr. Craig Spencer : That ’s a great question. It's really nothing compared to the early days
of the pandemic . You noted that I've worked in West Africa . I've
worked in the middle of civil conflict in Burundi. I've worked in some
pretty tough places, and very few have actually take n my breath
away, like walking into the emergency room in early April of 2020 , and
walking int o what felt like the apocalypse. I had more people die on a
daily basis in New York City from COVID t han I did in West Africa from
E bola a t many points. And the o ne thing that really stuck out to me ,
this morning I was listening to a report on NPR, about a young
emergency medicine doctor, a colleague out in LA, who had taken all
these photos and tried to show the humanity of what was happening
inside their emergenc y rooms. They're facing similar situations that
we were facing almost a year ago. And it was heartening in a sense to
know that my colleagues understand the difficulty of this, the
challenge of this, and that in some sense, we're together in this crisis
in unison, and that we're sharing this experience . I think that's
important for our mental health and for healing afterwards.

But at the same time, I was really dejected because, as you said, i t's
been nearly a year that I started sharing, you know, the real ity of
COVID and what it means inside hospitals , and here I have colleagues
of mine across the country that are really starting or really having to
deal with this really hard on a daily basis, still in the same way that it
was hitting us, you know, almost a year ago. So , in that sense, the fact
that it has been going on so long , that it was so acute that it was so
hard , it just made us all exhausted in a way that quite frankly I haven't
been in a long time .

Now , in New York City, we still have a high rate o f COVID . If you look
at the map, we're still considered a severe outbreak, but it's very
different than when it was in March and in April when every single
patient coming in was short of breath, had a low oxygen, many
needed immediate resuscitation, many p eople died. We're still seeing
COVID , b ut we're much better at managing it and I think we're much
better at managing ourselves as well.

Dr. Craig Spencer

Margaret Flinter : Well Dr. Spencer, it feels like the whole world has been in a state of
being overwhelmed by the COVID - 19 pandemic for a whole year now.
And we remember back before that when we were all concerned
about Ebola, and now I understand Ebola has recently reemerged in
Africa, eliciting tremendous concern in the global health community ,
and of course, you have the direct experience of having both cared for
Ebola patients, and having become very sick yourself with that. But
you said that your experience with Ebola did much to prepare you for
our curr ent experiences with COVID - 19. I would be really interested
to hear what lessons did you bring back from that experience of
battling a deadly pathogen in a place where so little was known at the
time , a nd there were so few health care resources .

Dr. Craig Spencer : Yeah, that's a great question. There were practical things that I had
learned, but also, some more importan t I think coping strategies that
I' d learned from working in places like West Africa during Ebola. From
a practical perspective, you know, in the US, we don't have to use
personal protective equipment , or di dn't really , all that often and all
that well . Right? W e didn't have, unless you were working primarily
with TB patients, tuberculosis patients or others with concerning
infectious diseases, we didn't put on N 95 s all t hat often, the majority
of us. W e didn 't have to really worry about the integrity of our
personal protective equipment, because we weren't worried that
every patient could potentially have a very deadly disease that could
impact us and our families.

And I think having had that experience in We st Africa, putting on an
N 95 multiple times a day, going through the donning and doffing
process, recognizing that doffing is way more important than actual
donning. That's where you're potentially infected . Knowing that
having a PP E buddy , someone to chec k on you, and really to make
sure your personal protective equipment is put on correctly and
remains protective throughout your shift , these are all really
important things that I learned from others working in West Africa ,
that I tried to implement here i n New York City when we were dealing
with COVID.

But I think the more important lessons that I learned, and I think more
important for myself and for my colleagues, was that doing this work
isn 't just physically exhausting, i t's mentally exhausting. And at the
beginning, I think there's a lot of motivation , this is challenging. I work
in an emergency room, where you know, quite frankly, we love taking
care of whatever i s coming through the doors , a nd the bigger the
challenge the better. But after a couple o f weeks of this, of seeing so
many of your patients struggle to breathe, so many die , a nd really
feeling helpless in a way , i t was both morally dejecting a nd from a
mental health perspective I saw it starting to take a big to l l. And I had
gone through this before in West Africa, I ’d learned some of those

Dr. Craig Spencer

coping mechanisms, what do you do when not only your patients are
getting sick, but some of your friends and your colleagues are as well ,
and so trying to create a space for my colleagues to be vulnerable , to
share. You know, in medicine, we're not that great with sharing our
vulnerabilities , we’re not that great with talking about our mental
health issues or our challenges , a nd so I thought really important early
on was to make that space for my colleagues, for my friends. And I
think that helped and made a big difference.

Mark Masselli: It certainly did. You know, I think there's no secret that the country,
United States , failed to meet the challenges of the pandemic from
denial , to having no unified nation al testing protocols , or any real
public health strategies. And you said that we failed at every turn . I
somewhat -- you know, I think we've heard people say a failure of the
public health sy stem seems to be too generous. I t almost seemed to
be criminal in nature, if you will, because the studies have shown that
we cou ld have reduced deaths by 40% i n the United States if we
followed some simple basic public health protocols, which could have
been articulated at national level. T his 50 - State Strategy never
s eem ed to work and still probably isn't the smartest move. Talk to us
about the public health failures that led to the catastrophe , a nd what
we must learn from these really unfortunate harsh lessons that
devastated the lives of so many Americans .

Dr. Craig Spencer : Yeah I want to say in retrospect, it gets me quite frus trated, but it's
not retrospect, right? We're still in the throes of this pandemic. But
we can look back on the previous administration, and I think reflect
on lot of the early missteps that s et us up really for failure that we
continue to see . Right ? We're having the equivalent of a 9 / 11 in terms
of deaths every single day in this country . Even as ca se numbers and
hospitalization numbers goes down , deaths are still stubbornly high.
Look, I wro te in 2015 in the New England Journal of Medicine, a
reflection on my experience with Ebola, and how politics had played
into the public health response then. And if you recall, there were
many governors, including one who was leading the respo nse here in
my own home state, w ho politicized the way that we responded , and
the public health measures needed to respond to E bola at that time.

And what I said was that, you know, in times o f national crisis and
national disease outbreaks and pub lic health emergenci es, we need
really one unified and codified plan from the CDC, not 50 different
ideas that can change with their proximity to the next election. And
we've seen that throughout . Right ? And a lot of this was stoked by an
administration that did undermine pub lic health guidance early on,
that undermined the value of things like masking, and the importance
of testing that made it much more difficult to access some of these
critical supplies that were necessary to not only understand the scale
and the speed of t his pandemic, but to help get it under control. And I

Dr. Craig Spencer

think that's reflected in the fact that the US has 4% of the population
and over 20% of the cases and the deaths . We did not need to fail this
poorly, we did not need to fail this long , to the point we are now at
half a million deaths from COVID and counting. I t hink it would have
been bad here regardless . R egardless of who wa s in charge, this virus
itself is mean.

We are , unfort unately, a perfect population for this virus by virtue of
being imperfect. W e have a lot of chronic diseases, there's an older
population, you know, a lot of the things that increase the
susceptibility to severe outcomes from COVID. That being said, if we
had put in place a strong public health system, not only at the outset
of th is pandemic, but beforehand when we knew that a pandemic was
coming, and still we underfunded our public health, we underfunded
our public health in pandemic preparedness for so long, we could
have prevented a lot of the cases, a lot of the hospitalization s and a
lot of the deaths.

Margaret Flinter: Well Dr. Spencer, I want ed to talk about death for a moment. And I
know the days when people lined up in the streets in New York and
bang ed their pots and pans in appreciation , they have faded away. I
do think t here is a profound and deep ongoing new appreciation for
what health care workers do when they run towards trouble, and not
away from it. But th e reality was, as you reference d in your opening
remarks, health care workers were experiencing death at a volum e
and a rapid on a daily basis that most of us in health care have never
experienced in our lives. And we've heard from so many people that
there seem ed to be almost a universal commitment in hospitals to
making sure that if people had to die without their loved ones there,
they weren't going to die alone , and health care workers, al l of them ,
whatever the titles after their name, really did their best to try and
bring that end of life experience to make it as humane as they could. I
know you produced a rea lly powerful video of that experience . M aybe
share with our listeners what you all were doing on the inside to try
and bring that compassion and presence to people at the end of life.

Dr. Craig Spencer : Yeah the one thing that I say about what I do in emer gency medicine
is that our job is to save lives. Really, that's what we do . Whether it's
trauma , or a heart attack, or a stroke, or whatever it may be , our job
in the emergency department is to save lives and to stabilize. And so
many times we found oursel ves standing beside a ventilator after
speaking with a family , after talking about goals of care , and turning
the ventilator off and trying to give some humanity in those last
moments of life as those breaths slipped away from someone's
father , or grandfat her , or a loved one. And it was unlike anything the
majority of us had ever done , even in West Africa. You know, the
death from Ebola was horrible and was painful. It was difficult to see.
But there was something so unnerving and so unexpected about it

Dr. Craig Spencer

her e in the US , you know working in one of the largest hospital
systems , having access to anything you could imagine. A 24 - hour MRI
and CAT scan, you know unlimited resources for some reason just
made this that much harder to bear. You know, calling up famili es on
the phone, talking to them and trying to explain these end of life
discussions , likely outcomes over a grainy FaceTime video was not
only really difficult just technically , it didn't always work so great. And
it was really hard to get through , but it just was never an easy
discussion.

It never got easier . It never got better. It was always difficult because
on the other hand of that video connection was a family, or a loved
one , who wa s hearing for the first time that their family , their father,
their best friend, the person they love d the most in this world is likely
going to die. And we may have got ten better at managing the words
that we used , or thinking about the script , or , you know, the training
that we actually got as people who are really adep t and committed to
saving lives. We had to learn about how we talk about what happens
at the end of life a lot better , and that was, I think, a challenge for all
of us, but especially for us in the emergency department.

Mark Masselli: But really, those sma ll acts of kindness were so important and made
such a profound difference as someone transitioned on and their
family was grieving and you were there , s o thank you.

You know, we're speaking with Dr. Craig Spencer , Director of Global
Health in Emergency M e d icine at New York Presbyterian / Columbia
Univ ersity Medical Assistant Center . He is Assistant Professor of
Emergency Medicine and P opulation and Family Health at Columbia
University Medical Center. He is also on the board of Medecins Sans
Frontieres Doctors Without Borders.

You know, there's some good news on the horizon, the vaccine i s
here. S upplies are starting to increase. And we've got a new
administration, the Biden administration. And there's a lot to think
about , b ut I really wonder with this new adm inistration focused in on
trying to improve the delivery system, trying to increase supplies,
what's your hope for this new administration , and what may be
guidance that you'd like to provide them as they think about the path
from here to the next stage , a nd hopefully getting through the rollout
of vaccines ?

Dr. Craig Spencer : Tha t’s a great question. I'll reflect first on how things have gone so far,
and what I think needs to be a bigger part of the discussion going
forward. You know, Ron Klain, who's the White Hous e Chief of Staff ,
was the Ebola C zar back when I was treating patients in West Africa.
And, you know, April of 2020, well, before he had any elected
position, or any position in the White House, I remember him
tweeting out that getting a vaccine is going to be hard , b ut getting a

Dr. Craig Spencer

vaccine into vials, and getting a vaccine out, would arguably be even
more difficult. And so I think this is something that has been on the
mind of the people who are now in the Oval Office, who are now
overseeing the rol lout of this vaccine , and that in itself wa s
heartening.

We've seen the numbers over the past few weeks go up . You know,
we've doubled the number of vaccines that are being administered
n ow, compared to just four weeks ago when this administration took
ove r . I think some of that was going to happen r egardless . This rocky
start in rollout was going to get better regardless of who was in office.
But I think that there has been a re ally coordinated push from the
Federal G overnment to try to coordinate this muc h better at the local
and state level. I think that's what we've needed all along, not just
with vaccine, bu t with testing and PPE and treatments, etc.

I'm quite heartened, because really to go from sequencing a genome
just over a year ago, to having vacci nes with over 90% efficacy, and
getting them into the arms of millions of people , is absolutely
stunning a nd I think a testament to the miracle of science. I suspect
that, you know, as promised, we will likely have the majority of those
eligi ble in the cou ntry vaccinated by the summer. W e will have some
sense of return of normalcy in the months after that, especially if
these vaccines do prove to be as efficacious as the stud ies have borne
out . And that's all great news. The one thing that really concerns m e is
more around the issues of vaccine equity and what we're going to be
doing here in the US to prepare the rest of the world , because it may
be cliché, but we're not safe until we're all safe. And that's a big part
of the discussion that I haven't seen e nough of yet.

Margaret Flinter : Well, we ar e happy to tell you that here in Connecticut those vaccines
are getting into the arms , a nd we're out there on the front lines
everyday doing drive - through clinics, on - site clinics, going to homeless
shelters, with the whole strategy that we need to reach people. B ut
we know , when you say we're not safe till all of us are safe , w e're
thinking globally, and certai nly from your work with Doctors Without
B orders and your commitment to global health. We are very
concerne d about what happens outside of the United States . We've
been following t he World Health Organization's C OVAX efforts and
wonder if you can comment on how well you think that is going
beyond w hat we c an do here in the United States . How are we doing
with t his as a global strategy and how satisfied are you with the
efforts to date and what do you think needs to be done next ?

Dr. Craig Spencer : What I've been saying is that I personally have received more doses of
a COVID vaccine than a 130 countries . I am ve ry lucky and I am quite
happy that I am protected , but there are health care workers all
around the world like myself and other vulnerable groups , that may

Dr. Craig Spencer

not be vaccinated until 2022 or 2023 . That may be years away. And
the COVAX facility I think is grea t . It is an attempt to try to secure
those doses primarily for countries that don't have the ample
contracts and purchasing power of advanced economies like our own.
It's, I think, a necessary step to make sure that we get the world
vaccinated. That's the best way to prevent variants that can evade the
immune response for the prot ective effect of the vaccines , a nd t he
best way to prevent them from developing .

In terms of , you know, is COVAX going to be the one and only
solution? No . COVAX has said that thei r goal is really to try to get 20%
of the eligible population vaccinated by the end of this year . We need
more than that. COVAX , also unfortunately, has a huge funding
shortfall of over $27 billion. And it may sound like a lot, but it pales in
comparison t o the amount that advanced eco nomies like the US
would lose i f we continue with this inequitable vaccine rollout across
the world. What I mean by that , there's been studies by international
Chamber of Commerce, RAND Institute, etc, that have estimated up
t o you know, four , five, maybe even $9 trillion of economic losses.
And half of that being borne by advanced economies like the US, even
if we get our whole population vaccinated, because of the drag on the
global economy, continuing COV ID around the world would represent.

S o , I think there i s a strong moral humanitarian argument for making
sure we do more to get more vaccine into more arms outside of this
co untry. T here is a strong public health argument because, you know,
getting more people vaccinated aro und the world prevents the
development of these variants which can undermine our protective
vaccine strategy , the protective effect of vaccines. And there's also a
really strong economic argument. And I think that needs to be
brought back to the US , to oth er wealthy countries, who to da te, have
contracts for more vaccines tha n they have even for people who are
eligible to receive a vaccine , a nd think about how we not only
concentrate on our equitable distribution here in the US, which has
been problematic, but how we concentrate on that as well globally .

Mark Masselli: Well it's so important . We are all passengers on Spaceship Earth , and
so we need to keep on understanding we're all in this together. And,
you know, you've lamented that the world did not appe ar to learn
from the lessons of Ebola , or MERS , or SARS , a nd that really
fundamentally needs to change. And you just launched a new series
piece on the online publication ‘ Medium ’ , really to use your frontline
experience battling epidemics and pandemics to help foster a deeper
understanding of these challenges. And I'm wondering if you could
talk a little bit about the series you're embarking on .

Dr. Craig Spencer : Absolutely . You know, about a year ago, I think I have 500 followers
on Twitter , and I mostly tweeted out about human rights in [inaudible

Dr. Craig Spencer

00:23:08] where I was doing some work , and the impact on human
health. And once COVID hit, I used Twitter as a place to try to share
kind of these public health pearls , the reality of what wa s happening
on the front line. A nd in that process over the past year have gained
over 200,000 followers and really have had I think a megaphone to try
to share the reality of what's happening with COVID in this country.
B ut Twitter isn't perfect for sharing a lot of nuance , and so the goal
was through this writing s eries, this contributor series w ith M edium,
so every week , to share something that's more than just a hot take on
the latest news, but to really look deeply into what got us here, how
we're managing this , and what needs to happen going forward.

In the first piece, I looked at my experience from Ebola, and what that
taught me in terms of preparing for COVID. T his idea that
preparedness is not only the best financial investment from a public
health perspective, it's absolutely key , a nd we need to prioritize this
so that we're not continuing to talk about how we should have
learned the lessons , next time. But also , I want to look into some of
these deeper issues , and you know, what primed the health care
system here in the US to fail so miserably . Right ? There are many
preexisting conditions that we have , lack of acce ss to quality
affordable health care for millions of Americans in the country with
spending the most by far per capita on health care. How do we
address th ese inequities , a nd how d o these inequities really line us up
to have such a profound impact from this virus here in the country all
over this country.

So really, the goal of this M edium relationship, this collaboration for
the next six months , is to weekl y reflect on one of these issues , t o
think about how we prepare better , how we should have known
better and what we actually do with that moving forward. And this
week , I'm writing on this idea of vaccine nationalism, you know the
hoarding of vaccine in ad vanced countries. And going forward, I'll talk
about, you know, the reasons for and against things like vaccine
passports and what that would mean for people in other countries.
I ssues around access to treatments, how we actually fund and
prepare for pande mics in places as the climate changes and makes us
all more vulnerable. So, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of reflection. It's
meant to be a lot of fun , a nd hopefully I'll be able to share a lot , that I
have been trying to on Twitter threads, but with a lo t more nuance
and a lot more detail.

Mark Masselli: Such an important voice.

Margaret Flinter: Great. We've been speaking today with Dr. Craig Spencer, who’s the
Director of Global Health in Emergency M edicine at New York
Presbyterian / Columbia University M edical Center. He's also the
Assistant Profes sor of Emergency Medicine , and P opulation and

Dr. Craig Spencer

Family Health at Colum bia University Medical Center. L earn more
about his work and access his writing on the pandemic by going to
Craig_A_Spencer@ Medium .com , o r follow him on Twitter at
Craig_A_Spencer . Dr. Spencer, we want to thank you for your
revealing look at the frontlines of pandemic treatment and care , for
your commitment to advancing global health , your straigh tforward
comment s, and for joining us today on Conversation on Health C are .

Dr. Craig Spencer : Thank you so much Margaret and Mark . It was a pleasure .

[Music]

Mark Masselli: At Conversations on Health Care, we want our audience to be truly in
the know when it comes to the facts about health care reform and
policy. Lori Robertson , is an award - winning journalist , and Managing
Editor of FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate
for voters that aim to reduce the level of deception in U.S. politi cs.
Lori, what have you got for us this week?

Lori Robertson: We've seen plenty of misinformation about COVID - 19 circulating on
social media. One example, headlines on videos and unreliable
websites have distorted the facts about a recent order by the Cent ers
for Disease Control and Prevention that mandates face masks be
worn on public transportation. The order doesn't require that
individuals wear two masks , as the social media posts claim. CDC
guidance issued with the order , does say that cloth masks shou ld be
made of at least two layers , as the agency has long recommended.
Some independent experts are now advising that wearing two masks ,
such as a cloth mask paired with a surgical mask, in some situations
could provide greater benefit when it comes to con trolling the spread
of the Novel Coronavirus. And the CDC has posted the results of a lab
experiment that found a cloth mask , worn over a medical procedure
mask , can significantly improve the fit and effectiveness of the masks.

The CDC ’s website suggests t hat form of double masking as one
modification for better protection. But the Federal agency has not
issued a demand that the public wear two masks , as the social media
st
post s claim. The CDC order , which went into effect February 1 , only
says that those u sing public transportation must wear a mask , which
the order defines as ‘ a material covering the nose and mouth of the
wear er, excluding face shields. ’ It's worth noting that while the text of
the CDC order says it reserves the right to enforce the order t hrough
criminal penalties , i t said it doesn't intend to rely on such penalties ,
and instead anticipates voluntary compliance. And that's my fa c t
check for this week . I'm Lori Robertson, Managing Editor of
Fact C heck .org.

[Music]

Dr. Craig Spencer

Margaret Flinter: FactCheck. org is committed to factual accuracy from the country’s
major political players and is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy
Center at the University of Pennsylvania. If you have a fact that you’d
like check ed , email us at www.chcradio.com . We’ll have
FactCheck.org’s Lori Robertson check it out for you here on
Conversations on Health Care.

[Music]

Margaret Flinter: Each week , Conversation s highlights a bright idea about how to make
wellness a part of our communiti es and everyday lives.

Sub - Saharan Africa leads the world in maternal and infant deaths
each year. According to an annual report from Save the Children, a n
estimated 397,000 babies died at birth in that region in 2013 , a nd
some 550 mothers died per day as well. Most of the causes have to do
with lack of access to medical care in these low resource regions , a nd
often the local midwives lack formal medical training to prepare them
to conduct interventions i n the event of a life threatening event like a
hemorr hage or an infection.

Anna Frellsen : We know that 90% of all the deaths that we see today could be
prevented if the mother had had access to this, you know, really basic
skill care during the childbirth.

Margaret Flinter Anna Frellsen is CEO of the Materni ty Foundation, a Copenhagen
based nonprofit dedicated to eliminating maternal and infant death in
the world. Their organization has created intervention for midwives
living in low resource areas, if they just have access to a Smartphone .
It's called the Sa fe D elivery App , a nd it provides comprehensive
training for midwives that teach them and guide them on what to do
in the event of a birthing crisis.

Anna Frellsen : T his is really a matter of building the skills of the health workers who
are already out the re , and empower them to be able to better handle
the emergencies that may occur during a childbirth, such as you
know, the woman starts bleeding , or the newborn is not breathing ,
and so forth. So first and foremost i t’ s a matter of finding a way that
we ca n reach the health workers and build their skills.

Margaret Flinter Frellsen says the real promise of the Safe Delivery application lies in
its ability to provide ongoing obstetric and neonatal training , so that
local midwives can gain important clinical k nowledge o vert ime. The
Safe D elivery App has been designed to be culturally relevant and
easily understood, and it's received the United Nations ’ approval for
wider deployment. The Maternit y Foundation plans to have the Safe
D elivery App in the hands of 10 ,000 health care workers across the
region by next year, potentially i mpacting a million live births. A low
cost , culturally sensitive mobile app that offers immediate guidance

Dr. Craig Spencer

and assistance to midwives and health workers , the backbone of the
health care system in low resource areas, empowering them with
ongoing support and knowledge that can improve birth outcomes ,
n ow that’s a bright idea.

[Music]

Mark Masselli: You've been listening to Conversations on Health Care. I'm Mark
Masselli.

Margaret Flinter: A nd I'm Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli: Peace and h ealth.

[Music]

Marianne O’Hare: Conversations on Health Care is recorded at WESU at Wesleyan
University, streaming live at www.chcradio.com , iTunes, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. If you have comments, please email us at
[email protected] , or find us on Facebook or Twitter. We love
hearing from you. This show is brought to you by the Community
Health Center.