July 3, 2023
South Australian charity embarks on ultrasound program to make childbirth safer in Cambodia

At a clinic in rural Cambodia, a mother-to-be is seeing her baby for the first time on an ultrasound scan — an image that will be sent to volunteer sonographers thousands of kilometres away.

The team effort is a result of a program run by The 2h Project, an Adelaide-based charity providing free ultrasounds to people in Cambodia who otherwise would not be able to afford one.

The 2h Project’s program aims to help detect any issues early and allow patients and healthcare providers to appropriately plan for birth.

Kate Taylor, one of the charity’s founders and directors, said providing free ultrasounds was also an incentive for patients to engage with antenatal care.

“Back in December last year, we had a young mum come in, she was about 16 years old and she was 32 or 33 weeks pregnant,” Ms Taylor said.

“This was her first antenatal visit and she came because she could have a scan.

“We were able then to educate her about the importance of antenatal care … and safe birthing.

“She got a photo of her unborn baby, which is something that she’s never had before.

The 2h Project has been travelling to Cambodia to train midwives and educate communities on safe birthing since 2007.

Under a new pilot program, the charity sent six ultrasound machines to clinics in Cambodia and trained local midwives in how to use them.

Since then, midwives at the clinics have been conducting scans and uploading the images to an online cloud to be examined by two volunteer sonographers at Monash Medical Centre in Clayton, 30 minutes south-east of Melbourne.

“The ultrasound is a really important diagnostic tool in determining if the pregnancy is high-risk or not,” volunteer sonographer Peter Coombs said.

“By simply having an ultrasound device in the health centre, it will bring women to those health centres to get their antenatal care and also to support the delivery.”
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501317998/ ... -cambodia/
Source/VIDEO: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-02/ ... /102552924

My neighbours use ultrasound all the time. The whole apartment vibrates a sthey play music at teh highest volume possible, with distortion set at max.

They're extremely intelligent people who set the bar for being important as they quaff their 24 cans of $0.50 Krud and create a big face by making noise.