Prevention of Infections in Mothers & Babies

María Fernanda Díaz, MD.
Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Gabriela Henríquez Luthje, MD.
Universidad Iberoamericana, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Prevention of Infections in Mothers during pregnancy and babies in the newborn period

DOFMI's program for the Prevention of Infections of Mothers during Pregnancy and Babies in the newborn period is a quality improvement project that aims to identify, in a systematic manner, the Group B Streptococcus as the most common colonizer of pregnant women and babies suffering from neonatal sepsis. This is done with the main objective of providing sustainable and effective forms of preventions for these fatal infections.

This program’s initial phase started in September of 2021 at the Hospital Jaime Mota in Barahona, Dominican Republic. The obstetrics department, working alongside the microbiology department within this hospital, are in charge of taking 300 maternal samples from the patients that meet the criteria previously stablished and reporting growths in the culture to the foundation. Upon the completion of this initial phase, the results brought forward will be addressed in order to provide possible and viable solutions to reduce the number of infections in the country.

A second phase of this projects will be focused on the identification of this same pathogen as the most common causative of neonatal sepsis in newborns of the Dominican Republic.