Munesu Munyaka, a co-founder of Thrive Project Zimbabwe, lines the incubator with fabric, as other volunteers help prepare the other 31 incubators to ship to Zimbabwe by container in Toronto on June 19, 2019.Tijana Martin
Firefighters, movers and community members came together Wednesday afternoon to help a Toronto non-profit prepare to ship lifesaving medical equipment to Zimbabwe, to help the country’s premature babies have a better chance of survival.
Thrive Project Zimbabwe is sending incubators and other medical supplies to the country in hopes of providing better care to premature babies and their mothers. Each incubator is about the size of a refrigerator, and is intended to track the vital signs and maintain oxygen and temperature levels for a single baby.
“Currently, they have three babies per incubator,” said Kerry Grier, co-founder of Thrive Project Zimbabwe. “By us giving them these, we can hopefully cut that down to one baby per incubator, so we’re improving infection control right there.”
The incubators will travel for two months by sea and then by rail to Zimbabwe. Thrive is planning to send a team in the fall to help reassemble the incubators, and train local nurses on using the equipment.
Since 2018, the Thrive Project Zimbabwe has been sending medical supplies to Zimbabwe, a country with high premature birth and maternal mortality rates. Ms. Grier works as a part-time prenatal educator at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where she collects supplies no longer being used to send to the country.
When Sunnybrook told Ms. Grier that it was replacing the incubators in its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and offered to give her the old ones, she jumped at the opportunity.
Now, she and co-founder Munesu Munyaka, both of whom are from Zimbabwe, have 32 incubators and other supplies which they invited volunteers to help pack on Wednesday.
In 2015, Zimbabwe had a maternal mortality ratio of 443 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to UNICEF. By comparison, Canada’s ratio was 7 the same year. In 2010, the preterm birth rate in Zimbabwe was 17 for every 100 live births, while across Canada except Quebec, it was 8.1, according to Public Health Agency of Canada.
Ms. Grier, who gave birth to two of her five children prematurely in Zimbabwe, has seen firsthand the problems mothers and their infants face in the country. While in Zimbabwe, she met a woman named Patience, a language teacher at a local school. When Patience became pregnant, the two women would spend time together and make things for her baby. However, because of a lack of medical resources, Patience lost her baby during birth and ended up having a hysterectomy, preventing her from ever being able to bear children.
“I promised Patience, I said, ‘I promise you that one day, I’m going to do something to help,’” Ms. Grier said. “I can’t help Patience, but there are lots of Patience’s out there who can be helped.”
In Ms. Grier’s experience, some hospitals in Zimbabwe lack basic items like gloves and hand sanitizer. One clinic was given four thermometers “and they said, ‘We haven’t seen thermometers for ages,'” she recalled.
The donations have also boosted morale. “The nurses were so emotional that we cared about them, because they feel very forgotten,” Ms. Grier said, referring to an email she’d received from them.
In the early days of her scavenging at Sunnybrook, she met Ms. Munyaka, who works for a pharmaceutical company and was visiting the centre. When they realized they were both from Zimbabwe, they started talking about growing the movement Ms. Grier started.
“That conversation naturally progressed to what can we do here to bridge the gap between the need and the very willing and able-bodied people here in Canada that are willing to support the folks on the ground in Zimbabwe,” Ms. Munyaka said.
They launched Thrive Project Zimbabwe in March, 2018, and by August, they’d sent their first shipment to a hospital in the country. The incubators they’re sending now are their biggest initiative so far.
Sunnybrook approached Ms. Grier about donating the incubators.
“It’s consistent with our values as a hospital to in whatever way that we can help, that we do help,” said Ru Taggar, executive vice-president, chief nursing and health professions executive at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Ms. Taggar, who lived in Zimbabwe until she was 13, noted that all the medical equipment at Sunnybrook is replaced according to a specific life cycle.
“We always look for opportunities to continue to use the equipment as best as possible, or to enable opportunities for others to have access to the equipment,” Ms. Taggar said.
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