Accessed 16th August
2013
The World Needs More Midwives
By Esther Madudu, Ugandan Midwife
A motherless
baby begins life at a disadvantage. In addition to missing maternal love, the
baby is at risk for malnourishment, infection and a host of other problems. My
skills as a midwife are vital to saving the lives of mothers every day, but
they also go beyond delivering babies. I help to educate women with proper
healthcare information and campaign for maternal health to be prioritized.
I was only a
young child the first time my grandmother, a traditional birth attendant in
rural Uganda
Little did I
know then that many mothers die during childbirth. Having been a midwife now
for over 12 years, I also know that most of these mothers do not have to die.
With a skilled midwife present at birth, over 90 percent of maternal deaths can
be prevented.
But maternal mortality remains a heavy burden in sub-Saharan Africa where around 162,000 mothers die every year,
leaving close to one million African children motherless. The reason is that 40
percent of African women do not receive basic prenatal care, and more than half
of all deliveries take place at home without medical assistance.
Pregnant mothers
who do receive medical care often have to walk great distances to get to a
facility. There are days I have to walk to meet mothers who cannot make it to
the health center in rural Uganda
My heart breaks
to watch mothers go through such agonizing pain to give birth. As one of three
midwives at the Atiriri Health Centre in Katine ,
Uganda
Even under such
trying circumstances, I am happy to say that in the four years that I have been
at the health center, no mother has died in childbirth.
This week, I
shared my experiences at the Africa Regional Conference of the International
Confederation of Midwives (ICM). With partners such as the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) and Johnson & Johnson, the ICM conference was an opportunity
for African midwives to be recognized and to come together to share best
practices, learn new skills and call for stronger health policy and systems for
improving midwifery.
Once trained, a
single midwife can provide care for 500 women every year, including safe
delivery of 100 babies. In its report in April, Missing Midwives, Save the Children estimated that 350,000
more midwives are needed around the world to help reduce maternal and child
deaths. But midwifery training is very expensive for most women in Africa .
We need midwives
in Africa more than ever before. I am honored
to have been chosen by AMREF to be the face of its Stand Up for African
Mothers campaign to
raise awareness of the plight of African midwives and African mothers. AMREF
has set a goal to train 15,000 new midwives by 2015 to reduce maternal death in
Africa .
Without significant
extra funds and effort, the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to cut
death rates among women and children are unlikely to be met in many countries
by the 2015 deadline. Please show your support by sending a letter to America
