SAMAS Association (Health for mothers and infants)

SAMAS Association (Health for mothers and infants) is the first national network of perinatal educators - nurses, midwifes and kinetotherapists - trained to care for mothers and infants in their first 1000 days together (from the conception date up to 2 years old of the baby). The main activities of the association are:

1. provide a complex training program for midwives and nurses who plan to start delivering perinatal education and support services as well as continous professional development opportunities. Once they finish the basic SAMAS training program, midwives and nurses become Certified SAMAS Perinatal Educators and may choose to join contractually the SAMAS Network which provides them with significant and continuous support in launching their SAMAS perinatal education practice to serve the community they live in.

2. ensure that parents-to-be and new-parents have easy access to competent perinatal education and support services delivered by medical professionals in a friendly, supportive manner intended to guide parents towards the best decisions for the care and nutrition of the mother and the baby.

Results in four years of existance:

• 5 city-centers in Bucharest, Iasi, Pitesti, Timisoara, Bistrita

• 634 Perinatal Educators trained and certified by SAMAS in more than 20 cities from Romania

• transfer perinatal information to 250.000 mothers through day-tio-day work of the Perinatal

Educators in hospitals & maternities

Perinatal care is treated lightly otherwise: society corners it as tabu, hospitals overmedicalise it, sometimes doctors are not having enough time to provide the supportive interraction a woman needs in those moments. Information is thus taken randomly from online and offline media, without the rigor of a medical professional. This leads to the largest infant and mother mortality in Europe, high incidence of unchecked pregnancies, largest number of underage mothers, malnutrition, big prematurity rate.

The SAMAS Programme was created in 2013 by White Cross Foundation, Nutricia Early Life Nutrition Romania and the Red Cross, Sector 6, with the support of Danone Ecosystem. SAMAS trining is accredited by The Order of Nurses, Midwives and Medical Assistants in Romania (OAMGMAMR) and recommended by the Romanian National Society of Family Medicine and by the Romanian National Pediatric Society.

More info: https://www.programsamas.ro/english-page/