Ampadu Delivery Chairs

Ampadu Delivery Chairs enhance the rotation and descent of the fetus in a difficult birth (shoulder dystocia, face to pubis presentation, big baby, prolong 2nd stage) and give women in labour the extra strength to push with the helpful force of gravity. The intervention helps to reduce the home deliveries and increase skilled delivery at the facility level whilst bridging socio-cultural barriers to maternal, new born, and child health by providing women the option to deliver by sitting or squatting in health facilities. Between August 2015 and June 2018, 500 deliveries were recorded in the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, Tema General Hospital, Asutuare Health Centre and Amasaman District Hospital with the chairs. Not a single mortality or morbidity was recorded in the pilot cases. Mothers who have experienced this intervention described it as "simple, stress-free and comfortable." In October 2016 at the 2nd ECOWAS Good Practices Forum in Health held in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast, WAHO adopted it as one of the good practices in maternal and child health for a scale-up. Since then, about fifty Ghana Health Service facilities have rolled on to the next phase of the project. By July 2021 data from 25 out of the 53 facilities using the chairs indicate that 2,213 deliveries have been done without any complication to the mothers or their babies.