October Blog:Happy MUAM, LMI trainers!

It is MUAM (Medical Ultrasound Appreciation Month). Time for LMI to highlight those who have embraced medical ultrasound and are doing exceedingly well. To represent the many, allow us to introduce 4 such people among our midwife POCUS trainees who as part of our “Teaching Teachers” program have acquired and demonstrated the capacity to train other midwives in POCUS.

Meet Verlhie Carcagente, Precious DeVera, Apryl Collado and Dominique Onil, 4 midwives registered in the Philippines and former LMi trainees who have joined LMI as teachers. They stand for the many Filipino midwives who stand their ground in their municipalities as providers of primary and prenatal care either for those who cannot afford private “out of pocket” healthcare or in the more remote very underserved areas where there are no private providers with one public physician per 20-50,000 inhabitants (usually in geographically challenged locations).

What makes them stand out is that they are making an even greater difference by not only learning prenatal point of care ultrasound (POCUS), but by also training their local colleagues in acquiring that skill. Thus they allow many more mothers to present in time at skilled facilities to give birth (through more accurate dating of the fetus) and help detect common risks in time for early treatment preventing those often deadly emergencies like bleeding at the time of birth.

Apryl and Dom in action during POCUS outreach teaching on a remote island of Linapacan