Reflections from Our Board Chair and President & CEO
The year 2020 has been remarkable. It has been a year of trial and unforeseen challenges. It has also been a year of resiliency, hope, and love, as seen through the eyes of the people we serve.
Sister Rosemary Moynihan, Board Chair, and Mary Beth Powers, President & CEO, reflect on the year 2020 in the context of COVID-19. They send thanks for your continued support, and for sharing in our vision that health and human dignity should be shared by all. Read their reflections below.
COVID-19: Preparing Facilities, Frontline Workers, and Families
An unwavering commitment and extensive experience helped deliver an immediate, effective response.
CMMB has built a strong base of trust with national governments, partner organizations, and local communities through its excellence in service delivery and its long-term commitments. Over many years of work, CMMB has laid an operational foundation within local communities and undertaken high-impact programs that provide lifesaving healthcare for vulnerable women and children and underserved, poor communities. We develop programmatic work plans that are tested, and we evaluate and refine them to leverage efficiencies while maximizing effectiveness.
As word of COVID-19 began to make its way into the public eye, the path of this new virus was being closely monitored and tracked by CMMB health experts. Our headquarters and in-country staff had firsthand experience in epidemic response as a result of work on HIV/AIDS beginning in the early 1990s and more recently on outbreaks of cholera and Ebola virus disease. Our staff was on early and high alert and quickly mounted a response to the COVID-19 threat in the countries we work.
An extensive needs assessment conducted at the outset of the pandemic identified critical needs in preparedness and protection. CMMB swung into action providing personal protective equipment (PPE) and basic supplies; training for frontline healthcare workers and communities; provision of water and hygiene materials at facilities; and construction of triage and isolation units.
Our Medical Donations Program procured critical supplies and undertook airlifts to areas desperate to keep healthcare workers safe so that they could continue to treat the increasing number of sick people. CMMB conducted technical training webinars on COVID-19 and created and distributed online reference materials and guidelines. CMMB also quickly developed business continuity plans for our New York headquarters and all in-country offices, and we strengthened IT capacities so that staff could respond to the pandemic and continue critical healthcare work in safety.
Since we launched our COVID-19 response, 248 health facilities were provided with supplies, including personal protective equipment.
The Big Picture in 2020 — Thanks To You
Our Commitment
For over a century, CMMB has worked globally to improve the health and well-being of people living on the margins of society and to alleviate their suffering. Inspired by the generosity of many, we work in partnership with local communities, governments, volunteers, and other relief organizations to implement sustainable solutions to improve the health of women and children, and strengthen local health systems.
CHAMPS: Sustainable Change for Women and Children
CMMB brings transformative hope to vulnerable families through lifesaving, quality healthcare.
Our CHAMPS program (Children and Mothers Partnerships) creates lasting change in the care, and lives, of vulnerable women and children. Years of planning, training, and evaluating need are foundational pillars of our CHAMPS efforts. We make long-term commitments to communities and we build capacity of local health facilities to ensure sustainable, high-impact, community-driven healthcare solutions with the ultimate goal of improved care and increased self-reliance. CMMB invests in: providing antenatal care and safe delivery services to pregnant mothers; preventing and treating major health threats to children, like malaria and diarrhea, and combating malnutrition; ensuring childhood immunizations; and expanding access to clean water and good sanitation.
In just the past two years, CMMB has completed and continues to update household mapping surveys in each of our CHAMPS communities. We have gathered a comprehensive record of household data (number of households in the community, number of people in each household, number of children under five and the number of women in child bearing years, etc.). This is part of the programmatic investment we make that provides us with the ability to track, measure and make improvements in the delivery of our maternity and neonatal healthcare programs.
These benefits go far beyond our CHAMPS initiative. Compiling and studying these data points was instrumental in evaluating need in our urgent response efforts to COVID-19 as we could effectively map out a comprehensive and measured action plan that would maximize our outreach for our response efforts.
Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan Center for Health in Haiti is representative of the hope and care that our CHAMPS program brings. Women who never could have sought care now travel for miles so that they can give birth in a safe, clean environment and feel the expression of dignity that every person deserves.
579,866 people were served at our CHAMPS sites in Haiti, Kenya, Peru, South Sudan, and Zambia.
Maternal Health: “Linda Uzazi” for All Mothers
CMMB is committed to ensuring safe motherhood never wavers.
“Linda Uzazi” translates to “safe delivery” in Swahili, and it is the name of our program for pregnant women. The women who attend the four recommend- ed prenatal care appointments and learn the importance of prenatal care are now likely to give birth in a health facility with a skilled attendant—greatly decreasing the risk of maternal and infant mortality. Despite the challenges COVID-19 brings, our commitment to ensuring safe deliveries for mothers and infants has been unwavering.
In Kenya, the Linda Uzazi project is a community-based initiative that promotes safe deliveries for mothers and children. CMMB coordinates with local health facilities and community health workers, who encourage pregnant women to attend meetings at their local healthcare center.
Once they arrive, the women are paired based on their proximity to one another in the community. The paired, expectant mothers are encouraged to support one another and schedule their subsequent prenatal care appointments together, creating a deep sense of shared commitment.
The Linda Uzazi program has been an incredible success. The number of women participating has dramatically risen, as they know the importance of attending all four prenatal care visits and having skilled birth attendants deliver their babies. The program continues postpartum for six months and holds graduation ceremonies for mothers who complete and attend all the prenatal sessions.
COVID-19 was a serious potential barrier to the success of this important initiative, as mothers were concerned about risks in seeking care at health facilities. In addition, the countrywide lockdown prohibited people from leaving their homes except in the case of true emergencies.
With the assistance of CMMB Kenya, community health workers were equipped with masks, were trained on COVID-19 prevention, and were able to continue their outreach. They assured pregnant women that with the proper precautions it was safe to attend their appointments at the health facilities and important to do so. CMMB even worked with local police to make it possible for pregnant women to travel to their prenatal care visits and to health facilities for deliveries.
We believe every woman deserves the safest pregnancy and delivery possible— even during a pandemic.
123,270 pregnant women received health and social services.
Children’s Health: Caring for the Whole Child in a Crisis
COVID-19 has turned life upside down for children around the world.
We believe proper healthcare encompasses more than just the physical body—especially for children. COVID-19, although less likely to make children severely ill, has turned their world into an unfamiliar place. The fallout from COVID-19 has caused more children to face hunger, experience violence, and miss immunizations and other preventive healthcare services. Many have had to all but give up their ability to attend school. We are committed to providing services that support children’s physical health, safety at home, and emotional well-being.
Peru has experienced among the highest levels of COVD-19 infection and death rates in the world while attempting to control the spread via lockdown restrictions that have led to greater economic disparity. These restrictions caused immunizations, growth monitoring, and nutrition campaigns to come to a halt. CMMB Peru responded early and with compassion. The team swiftly turned to telehealth whenever possible, spending the first three months of the pandemic educating families and community health workers on COVID-19 prevention. Within just two months over the summer, CMMB staff and the trained community health volunteers made more than 11,000 calls to check in on children and mothers at home. CMMB began open-area vaccination clinics, immunizing more than 1,500 children. The CMMB team provided groceries and psychosocial support to families, many with children living with disabilities.
From famine to civil war to COVID-19, South Sudan has faced innumerable challenges. The emotional toll on its children has been enormous. CMMB South Sudan’s child protection team works with former child soldiers to bring life-changing psychosocial support, family reunification services, and safe spaces to play.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team knew the children in this pro- gram would struggle enormously without these essential services. Following all safety guidelines to prevent transmission of COVID-19 and providing extra education on the virus, the child protection team continued offering safe spaces for the former child soldiers and for victims of gender-based violence. Throughout the year, the team engaged more than 2,500 boys and girls in these incredible activities.
At CMMB, we are committed to never leaving children behind in the face of a crisis.
307,757 children under five years of age received health and social services.
WASH: Good Health Begins with Clean Water
CMMB is providing access to clean water to health facilities and communities to prevent COVID-19 transmission.
Mukelabai is a mother of three children and lives in a rural village near the town of Mwandi in Zambia. She collects water from the closest source—a shallow well that is more than a 45-minute walk away.
Mukelabai filters the water through a cloth, but it is still muddied and larvae swim inside. Mukelabai explains how she and her family all suffer from stomach pains and diarrhea due to the unsafe water. This is reality for many people in Zambia.Increasing access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene is an integral part of CHAMPS and our commitment to women, like Mukelabai, her children, and their communities.
Clean water and handwashing have become even more critical to slow the spread of COVID-19 and save lives. This year, CMMB expanded its clean water projects in local communities and health facilities. From building handwashing stations and rainwater catchment systems to installing indoor plumbing in health facilities and providing water purification packets to people like Mukelabai, CMMB’s clean water investments will have a life-saving impact for years to come.
“Clean water is life! Women give birth with dignity, girls have increased self-esteem, and the instances of diarrhea under five is greatly reduced.”
—Batuke Walusiku-Mwewa, Country Director, CMMB Zambia
CMMB’s community health workers play a large role in these projects. During home visits, they educate families about the health benefits of clean water and connect them to health facilities for care. They ensure that community members are trained on how to maintain their new water systems—building local capacity and ensuring long-term access to clean water.
261,811 people had improved access to clean water.
HIV/AIDS: Harnessing the Power of Faith Leaders to Combat Disease
When stigma thwarts COVID-19 prevention efforts.
HIV prevention and treatment has made incredible progress since the human immunodeficiency virus was first identified almost 40 years ago. HIV-positive individuals who adhere to a prescribed regimen of antiretroviral drugs can achieve undetectable viral loads and live full lives, despite a diagnosis that might once have been a death sentence. Yet stigma and misinformation persist. Today, CMMB uses approaches proven effective in our HIV response to also fight stigma around COVID-19.
Over time, CMMB has learned a great deal about HIV. But we are still constantly investigating innovative methods to prevent, test for, and treat HIV infection under ALESIDA, our HIV program in Haiti. Funded by our longtime partner, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ALESIDA works in 22 health facilities around Haiti.
Communities deeply trust faith leaders; rooted in faith, CMMB is also trusted. This year, to reduce stigma around HIV, we are empowering Haiti’s religious leaders— priests, ministers, and voodoo practitioners. We provide accurate information and teach them how to convey it persuasively to drive uptake in testing—the first step toward lifetime health for those with HIV infection. By harnessing the power of the faith community, ALESIDA is bringing individuals who have not previously been tested into treatment.
“People are scared and some think you can get COVID-19 just because you are poor. Awareness and education in the community is a key part of what we are doing.”
—Dr. Dianne Jean-François, Country Director, CMMB Haiti
Stigma also stymies efforts to prevent COVID-19 transmission. Misinformation is rife around the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. However, CMMB staff members are drawing on learnings from ALESIDA in sharing COVID-19 facts with faith leaders, including where to get tested and why it matters.
Stigma reduction is the goal, with the end of the pandemic in Haiti hanging in the balance.
323,602 people received HIV services.
Strengthening Healthcare Systems: For COVID-19 and the Future
CMMB is adapting and responding in the face of a global pandemic.
In South Sudan, Yambio State Hospital serves a population of half a million people. Hospitals in low-resource communities like Yambio are in need of medicines and supplies. This gap leaves residents at the highest levels of risk for COVID-19 and other diseases.
Early action and thorough assessments of health facilities allowed us to respond, providing PPE and medical supplies, evaluating needs, and establishing new protocols that helped slow the spread of COVID-19 while protecting the safety of frontline healthcare workers. CMMB also worked with state governments to improve health facility capacity.
Single-points of entry were mandated at hospitals; triage centers and permanent handwashing stations were built; and temperature tests were enforced. We conducted 1,957 trainings on COVID-19 with healthcare workers and community health workers, ensuring we could properly monitor the health of community members.
The government tapped CMMB to manage a onetime hostel in Yambio that had been renovated to serve as an isolation center to care for people who were symptomatic. Partner organizations assisted in digging water wells, setting up permanent handwashing facilities, and providing proper sanitation, beds, and supplies. Approaches developed during the Ebola crisis and over our years-long work to end HIV/AIDS were employed. A great educational effort was put in place so that community members understood that they could be treated for the virus and recover.
Even with COVID-19, our mission never waned in helping treat pregnant women and their newborns.
In the hospital in Ezo, mothers are delivering with skilled birth attendants at their side in a new maternity ward, with electricity from solar panels. This hospital is just one example of building improved access to sustainable healthcare.
817 healthcare workers and 1,140 community health workers received COVID-19 training.
Volunteer Program: Experts Build Capacity from a Distance
With travel restrictions in place, CMMB Volunteers can now serve from home.
COVID-19 abruptly halted international travel. In response, CMMB’s Volunteer Program adapted to continue to serve the communities where we work. By adding remote volunteering and educational opportunities, we have sharpened our focus on strengthening health services and building local capacity.
Since 1914, CMMB has answered the call to service through our Volunteer Program. In the spirit of this legacy, our commitment to connecting health practitioners and other skilled professionals to health facilities and community programs worldwide continues during COVID-19. By leveraging our partnerships and connections with individuals, volunteers have continued to support health services in the countries where we work. From providing remote technical support to presenting webinars on how to treat mothers infected with COVID-19 and their newborns, CMMB has created new opportunities in program development through education to build local capacity.
Our volunteers also served as CMMB ambassadors, using newly refined Zoom presentation abilities to share their experiences with college and university students, including Hunter College and Fordham, Fairfield, and Georgetown universities. CMMB volunteers are the best representatives we have as an organization as we share the important work being done on the ground in country and encourage the next generation of care providers with a direction and path forward.
Volunteer Story
For more than 30 years, Dr. Mike Pendleton has been committed to providing relief work around the world. In 2020, he served in Gidel, Sudan— home to Mother of Mercy Hospital in the Nuba Mountains and Aurora Prize-winner Dr. Tom Catena.
Medication Donations Program: Providing High-Quality Medicines Worldwide
CMMB’s Medical Donations Program expanded access to healthcare for the world’s most vulnerable people.
Our Medication Donations Program strives to increase resources and equip health facilities to provide care to the poorest patients—including when disasters and humanitarian crises strike.
CMMB partners to receive donated products with leading pharmaceutical companies, hospital networks, and medical supply manufacturers. Products distributed free of charge through the Medical Donations Program are allocated based on facility needs and help fill resource gaps of healthcare systems worldwide.
In addition to products, our program seeks to support partners through training and resources. To build capacity for the coronavirus response and prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Medical Donations Program created and distributed two practical guides to more than 3,000 beneficiary health facilities. The first guide provided updated policies for effective infection prevention and control of the virus in health facility settings. The second guide recommended methods for the conservation and safe, extended reuse of PPE in case of shortages.
In 2020, CMMB deployed more than $421 million worth of medicines and medical supplies to 52 health partners in 31 countries.
COVID-19 Emergency Response
As COVID-19 continues to spread, it is important for us to be mindful of the already fragile nature of healthcare systems in the countries where we work. We need you support now more than ever. Our shared work in this critical time will have an impact on the lives of those for generations to come.
Partnering to Provide Care to the Most Vulnerable
Medication Donations Program partnerships play a key role in CMMB’s efforts to deliver high-quality medicine and the best possible health solutions to women and children.
Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) is dedicated to advancing care through innovative research, and education. Mass General’s Global Neurology Research Group works in long-term partnership with facilities in low- and middle-income countries to improve the quality of care and to conduct research to establish best practices in these settings.
With the ongoing support of Mylan, CMMB was able to provide Mass General research teams with medical donations to support care and research in Guinea and Tanzania.
In low-resource countries such as Guinea, epilepsy frequently goes undiagnosed. Those in rural communities far from health facilities often turn to traditional healers for treatment of seizures. Even when patients do seek help at health facilities, it is rare that the medical staff has the expertise to properly diagnose nor the resources to treat them. Because of this, epilepsy is a much more common cause of death.
In Guinea, CMMB and Mylan provided an antiepileptic medication for study to better understand how to provide care for poor patients who suffer from epileptic seizures. Mass General’s research revealed that these patients are at greater risk for injury and have other, related health conditions. The study noted “a cycle of poverty in which a treatable illness leads to a new disability, additional morbidity, and lost socioeconomic opportunities.” Study findings present steps towards leveling the quality of care for people with epilepsy in the hopes that future generations will not face this suffering. These studies and others may help break the cycle of disease-inspired poverty.
CMMB’s work is vastly multiplied by the generosity of donor partners such as Mylan, who provide critically needed medicines, and by the innovative efforts of consignee partners like Mass General.
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Our Supporters
CMMB is honored to acknowledge our generous donors, whose steadfast support has sustained our lifesaving work. We are blessed by partnerships with compassionate individuals, corporations, and foundations which made our accomplishments in 2020 possible.
Learn more about our supporters, like Matthew Styczynski, who are advancing our shared mission and vision to provide quality healthcare that serves vulnerable women, children, and communities with love, dignity, and respect.
Other Ways to Give: You Can Make a Difference
Firm in our faith, CMMB has been providing quality healthcare and dignity to the poor for more than a century. As we carry out our shared mission to serve vulnerable women, children, and families in need, we hope you will continue to partner with us.
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