Acknowledgements

The Ministry would like to extend sincere thanks to those who generously provided their input to the development of this course, including each member of the stakeholder group and the facilitators and candidates at the pilot course. We acknowledge members, past and present of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, both Blantyre and Lilongwe campuses, at the University of Malawi College of Medicine who have contributed to the material in the COIN course through their input into guidelines developed over the years. Thanks to members of the Paediatric and Child Health Association of Malawi (PACHA) and to all healthcare staff in Malawi who have contributed ideas and time to developing this document and who strive to ensure provision of optimal care to neonates and young infants. Our appreciation also goes to Bernadette O’Hare, Kondwani Kawaza, Rizine Mzikamanda and Elizabeth Molyneux, for the manual and associated material and to Mr Norman Lufesi, Ajib Phiri, Queen Dube, Chikondi Chimbatata, Hanny Friesen, Laura Newberry, and Andreas Hansmann for their input. We thank all PACHA members, facilitators and participants who have actively contributed to the success of the COIN Course.

PACHA are grateful to all the creators and developers of several life support courses especially WHO, the ETAT and ETAT+ teams in Africa, and the Child and New-born Health Group. Much of the material from these courses has been gratefully borrowed and adapted for this. All the trainings and the approaches to training are intended to be as consistent as possible with the WHO / UNICEF Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) program and initiatives such as the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI), Help Babies Breathe (HBB) and Emergency Triage Assessment and Treatment (ETAT) that are implemented in Malawi. The basic text describing the evidence based care promoted through this course is the WHO’s ‘Pocketbook of Hospital Care for Children’ and in the Guidelines and Protocols for Neonatal and Young Infant Care in Malawi. We have used and blended established guidelines to produce the best approach for our setting. This is a course about care of new born and infants and though accidents can happen at this age trauma is rare and therefore it has been omitted from this course. We appreciate the critical role that good care of mothers will make to the outcomes of neonates and young infants and are committed to working collaboratively with our colleagues in maternal health towards our common goal of improving maternal and child health in Malawi.

COIN 2017
By the end of 2016, several hundred health professionals had been trained using the COIN course. In order to incorporate all the excellent feedback we received from PACHA members, candidates and facilitators a technical working group (TWG) was held on 1st December 2016. This was attended by Msandeni Chiumia Chiphaliwali, Andreas Hansmann, Norman Lufesi, Ernest Moya, Bernadette O’Hare, Patriciah Siyabu, and Edison Sabola. The facilitator’s manual, the participant’s manual and the slides were updated and available on the PACHA website. The next update PACHA TWG for COIN 2018 is planned for December 2017.

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