•The report calls on governments to tackle the global maternal health crisis by urgently investing in their midwifery workforce.
•In Kenya, midwives from across majority counties said their top request is quality health to women and girls was adequate and equipped facilities.
Image: FILE
White Ribbon Alliance (WRA), in collaboration with the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), has released a new report that details the key areas of investment needed to support midwifery globally.
The details were shared by over 56,000 midwives from 101 countries.
The report calls on governments to tackle the global maternal health crisis by urgently investing in their midwifery workforce.
Over 3500 midwives and nurses from Kenya participated in the survey.
To determine the priority investment areas, midwives were asked what they would want most in their role.
Two responses were: Availability for higher pay and benefits is the top global demand and Supplies and decent facilities.
Midwives want to be paid a living wage, with benefits.
Research by the Lancet from 2020 showed that fully resourcing midwife-delivered care by 2035 could avert 67 per cent of maternal deaths, 64 per cent of newborn deaths, and 65 per cent of stillbirths.
This would mean an estimated 4.3 million lives saved per year.
According to the State of the World’s Midwifery Report 2021, the world currently needs900,000 more midwives, this represents a third of the required global midwifery workforce.
Alongside these huge gaps in the workforce, midwives face discrimination, unequal pay, and difficult work conditions which mean they are unable to work to their full potential and importantly provide life-saving care to women, newborns, and people in communities across the world.
In Kenya, midwives from across the majority of counties said their top request for them to provide quality health to women and girls was adequate and equipped facilities.
Responses from midwives stated that lack of delivery beds, delivery equipment, poor referral systems, and an inadequate number of midwives continue to force them to offer inadequate services to mothers.
The report released is a follow on from the White Ribbon Alliance’s What Women Want campaign that found that better-supported midwives were key to women and girls accessing quality reproductive and maternal healthcare.
What Women Want demands have turned into a powerful advocacy agenda that is already seeing dozens of policy, budget, and point of service improvements.
With the survey results from midwives, there is an opportunity to improve health systems based on midwives’ self-identified areas, which will in turn support women and girls globally.