Midwife shortage gets in the way of reducing mortality rate among newly born babies and women during pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal period as shown in the first State of the World’s Midwifery report. The effect of such shortage is most notable in low-income countries, wherein poor marginalized women have no access to functioning healthcare facilities, qualified health professionals, midwives, and even those trained with midwifery skills.
The world is losing 358,000 women and 3.6 million newborns every year due to largely preventable complications. The mortality swells with the 2.6 million stillbirths caused by insufficient healthcare. The numbers boldly suggest immediate deployment of more skilled midwives to remote areas is very much necessary. Even in rural areas, wherein those in uniforms scrubs are outnumbered at an overwhelming rate, more midwives should be sent to give doctors and nurses a hand.
The probability of death or survival of women and newborns largely depend on how many are the skilled people that are going to provide health care. WHO and its partners are working closely to strengthen midwifery education around the globe, to increase women’s access to healthcare, especially in the more impoverished countries such as Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Haiti, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan. This is also deemed to answer improved services on primary health care as well as link women up with obstetric care if necessary.
I don’t know how these organizations are working on midwifery education, but I do hope they are imparting midwifery training to those people who are likely to devote their skills to these people. Who else but those coming right from the heart of the communities? These people need to be educated by the importance of healthcare from traditional doctors, and given the basic survival training. As for more thorough midwifery training, they have to be training until they become experts of the craft.
