THE ROTARY CLUB OF CANBERRA SUNDOWNERS on BIRTHING KITS

The Rotary Club of Canberra Sundowners have included birthing kit packing as an annual signature event, with their first event back in 2017 packing 200 kits.  Each year since the club has grown the event, with 2,000 kits purchased and packed in 2023.  With the help of about 150 Rotarians, friends and community volunteers, purchased and packed 3,000 birthing kits in 2024.  This is a fun and very satisfying event that is used to promote Rotary in the community and to support the broader service commitments. 2.6 million Birthing Kits have been made in Australia by volunteers.


BIRTHING KITS

Clean Birth Kits are simple and effective tools for basic infection prevention and first-line childbirth care. Each component has been selected to support the 6 principles of cleanliness at birth for mothers, newborns, and birth attendants in high-risk and emergency settings. Birthing Kits are basic kits comprising of the items necessary for a woman to give birth in locations remote from medical facilities and staff - a plastic groundsheet, a pair of gloves, a razor blade, a cake of soap, three pieces of string and five pieces of gauze.  The Birthing Kit Foundation Australia provides all of these items and community groups keep the costs down by packing the kits. Assembly Days give Australians a chance to help make kits and advocate for women. Each kit costs $5. 

The concept of the Birthing Kit began in 1995, when Adelaide Doctor, Joy O’Hazy, attended the United Nations Fifth World Conference on Women and heard Sally Field speaking about a similar kit she had seen in Nepal. With the idea that hygiene was key to improving maternal and newborn survival in low resource settings, Joy developed the Birthing Kit – a small zip-lock bag containing six basic and clean items to be distributed to women and birthing attendants in low-resource and emergency settings.

In partnership with the Adelaide Hills Zonta Club, Joy and the dedicated volunteers began assembling and distributing these simple kits around the world. The scale and impact of this project continued to grow and what was once known as the ‘Zonta Birthing Kit Project’ transformed into the Birthing Kit Foundation Australia in September 2006. By conservative estimates this number of kits would have saved the lives of tens of thousands of women and babies by reducing maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity.

THE ROTARY CLUB OF CANBERRA SUNDOWNERS

For a guest speaker on birthing kits and the assembly day held each year by the Rotary Club of Canberra Sundowners please contact the club and they will be happy to provide a speaker for you.

CONTACT:               https://rotaryclubofcanberrasundowners.com.au/














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