Dr Nuzhat Aziz HOD of obstetrics at Fernandez Hospitals, Hyderabad
She chose obstetrics, then labour ward management as her focus of work, after her postgraduation. She is currently the head of department of obstetrics at Fernandez Hospitals, Hyderabad, India. Reducing stillbirth rates was a major focus for her team; working on streamlining Obstetric care, labour protocols, perinatal mortality meets, CTG training and workshops, training in scalp electrode and fetal blood sampling. Perinatal mortality meets had to be a no blame, learning experience and prof Hugh Phillpott from South Africa helped them in partogram as well as mortality meets as part of ‘Every baby counts’ programme. They had to streamline stillbirth evaluation, train staff in evaluation and bereavement counselling. The GAP protocol (growth assessment protocol) by the Perinatal Institute, UK was aimed at reducing stillbirth through improving SGA detection rates. They requested for help and created the customised Indian centiles chart using their database and have been able to use the screening protocol to reduce stillbirths. Currently Fernandez Hospital has 10,000 births annually and their stillbirths rate is 5.4 per 1000 for 24 weeks and above and 3.0 per 1000 births for more than 28 weeks babies for their booked population. This is a journey of their team (60 doctors, midwives) and she was one of the facilitators for this change.