MORE than 2000 mothers will receive pregnancy packs from Rotary Suva over the next weeks.

This follows Rotary’s donation of the pregnancy packs to the Ministry of Health this week.

The donation was presented to Health Minister Dr Neil Sharma by the chairperson of Rotary Suva, Ms Caz Tebbutt and former president Nalin Patel at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital on April 12.

Ms Tebbutt said the donation was the last phase of their assistance of pregnancy packs for mothers, with the first phase delivered last year.

“And we hope that this would go towards helping mothers and their new-borns,” she told Dr Sharma at the donation.

Dr Sharma thanked the Rotarians for their assistance and said mothers and their new-borns would benefit from the donation.

“This is much appreciated and I know that mothers will put these packs to good use,” he added.

The packs include baby wipes, diapers, baby cream, baby soap and baby powder amongst other things.

Meanwhile, births at the CWM Hospital shot to an all time high in March.

A total of 924 births were recorded at CWM alone for March, the highest recorded in the history of new births for a single month at a single facility.

Figures from Lautoka and Labasa averaged around 600 births.

January to June are the peak birth months with February to March being the “peak of the peaks”.

At the same time the Ministry of Health is now working on training midwives and nurses at the sub divisional health facilities so that they are upskilled.

Health spokesman Iliesa Tora said this was part of the ministry’s program to ensure that mothers are able to give birth at local health facilities.

“We are getting our nurses and midwives to CWM to train and upskill. At the same time we are sending some of our midwives to sub divisional health facilities so that they can pass on the experience and knowledge to our staff at that level,” Mr Tora said.

“That will help in ensuring that we have skilled staff to help mothers in their deliveries.”