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Shaping midwifery to save lives

Star Health Desk
Every day, midwives around the world are to be thanked for their work in providing care to women and their newborns, in particular at the critical time around childbirth.
Much progress has been made in recent years in increasing access to skilled care at birth and the proportion of women who give birth in facilities. Nevertheless, every year, 2.9 million newborns die in the first month of life and another 2.6 million babies are stillborn with many of these deaths occurring around the time of birth. In addition, an estimated 2,87,000 women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth. One of the most effective ways to prevent theses deaths is to train midwives to tackle adverse conditions during the critical period.
Bangladesh has a severe shortage of trained midwives. Nationally, just 32% of women are looked after by skilled attendant while giving birth.
Shaping midwifery in providing quality of care around childbirth and the immediate postnatal period for saving the lives of women and newborns, and preventing stillbirths — is crucial and a triple return on investment.
Experts recognise that care for women and newborns — from before conception through the postnatal period — is best provided by a dedicated health professional qualified in midwifery, and that this care should be based on respect for the normal biological process of childbirth.
Professional midwives are uniquely placed to provide such care, working in teams with communities and specialists in order to create access and ensure timely recognition and management of complications when they occur.
Experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged governments to allocate adequate resources for maternal and newborn health services within national health sector plans which should include funds for the training and retention of midwives. WHO recommended to ensure all women have access to sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn services. These include issues such as preventive and supportive care from a collaborative midwifery team, immediate access to emergency services when needed, and completing post-secondary education. From a broader perspective, women should delay marriage, have access to healthy nutrition and receive four pre-
birth care visits.
Midwives are crucial to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) specially 4, 5 and 6. The key issue however, there is not enough midwives to these huge number of preventable deaths. In order to ensure high levels of coverage and quality care, an estimated 3,50,000 more midwives are still needed globally. To improve this situation and fill gaps in maternal and neonatal health provision, the Government of Bangladesh, supported by WHO and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), is aiming to train 3,000 midwives by 2015.
Along with increasing their number, we should also ensure that they are properly trained and have a good environment to work. The challenge is also to ensure there are enough teachers with the right skills to keep developing the quantity and quality of midwives in Bangladesh.
Source: World Health Organisaion