Today is International Midwives Day, and many organisations are using this to highlight the awful disparities in maternal care, and maternal and infant mortality around the globe. As we blogged yesterday, there is the additional, largely overlooked tragedy of still births. And all of these issues could be addressed, in large part at least, by better provision of midwives.
Midwives play a vital role not just in safe delivery, but in the care and support of mothers throughout their pregnancy and in the vital first days and weeks after the birth of the child. For most normal births, and indeed many more complex births, midwives have the skills and knowledge that can not only make child birth safer, but also a joyful and positive experience. My own family’s experience bears this out, and seeing my third child born at home with two highly skilled and experienced Christian midwives in attendance, praying with us made an incredible difference.
Globally, the UNFPA reckons that only one in three women in the developing world have access to a trained midwife. 340,000 women in the developing world die each year in childbirth – and most of those deaths can be prevented.Millions more suffer infection and disability as a result of preventable maternal causes.
However, the fact that this figure has been reduced over the last decade from 500,000 deaths a year is surely a sign of hope – that we can do something to end this appalling toll (see Hogan M C, Foreman K J, Naghavi M et al. Maternal Mortality for 181 Countries 1980-2008: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5. Lancet 2010:375:1609-23 ).
And the provision of more midwives is one, key step. Ensuring that each and every woman in the world has access to a trained midwife is not unachievable, but could drastically improve this death toll. However, as we blogged last month, this shortage of midwifery provision is not just a global health crisis; it is one that affects us here in the UK too. We need more midwives everywhere if we are going to save the lives of mothers and children (born and unborn).
However, as CMF’s submission to DFID on its maternal health strategy emphasised last year, single interventions are not the answer. Challenging attitudes and values towards women, children and childbirth, providing a stronger health system across the board, and changing national government funding priorities and policies regarding family medicine are all vital to changing the situation. Nevertheless, the role of midwives in improving the survival and wellbeing of mothers and children cannot be underestimated, and we need to get behind campaigns to increase their training and resourcing throughout the world.