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| © Trygve Bolstad / Panos Pictures 2005 |
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Midwives are on the front lines of the effort to reduce maternal deaths and improve reproductive health for women around the world. Ipas sponsored 14 midwives from Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Ethiopia to participate in the 2nd Africa Midwives Regional Conference on “African midwives united towards achievement of Millennium Development Goals” held in Kampala, Uganda, May 4-7, 2010.
The conference was organized by the Uganda Private Midwives Organization(UPMO), one of Ipas’s major partners on reproductive health programming in the country, and supported by International Confederation of Midwives (ICM). During the conference, participants addressed the following themes: strengthening midwifery practice, promoting the health of women, newborns and families, HIV/AIDS in the midwifery context, and midwifery research. The meeting, which brought together midwives from the four corners of Africa, resulted in agreement to create an Alliance of African Midwives Associations, an important step towards improving the health of African women and their families.
The four-day meeting offered participants an opportunity to share knowledge, research and experience to strengthen the midwifery practice in relation to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One of the 10 goals is to reduce maternal mortality by three quarters by 2015. As community leaders and primary health-care providers, midwives are instrumental to efforts to promote women’s reproductive health and decrease maternal mortality, including death and injury from unsafe abortion.
Ramatu Daroda, Ipas senior advisor for training and service delivery improvement and a midwife herself, notes that midwives are important partners in Ipas’s work. “Midwives are active in abortion care in a number of countries and their competence has been documented in numerous research studies.” She continued, “Midwifery associations can help develop ethical guidelines on abortion and can advocate for the removal of legal and regulatory barriers to midwives providing abortion-related care for legal indications.”
In addition to supporting midwives’ participation in the conference, Ipas staff led several sessions that discussed the role of midwives in abortion care, the role of mid-level providers in developing access to medical abortion, and the promotion of human rights and safe motherhood in Africa through abortion policy changes.
The conference coincided with the International Day of Midwives, during which Ipas organized a session on the use of misoprostol for postabortion care, and led workshops on values clarification and the role of midwives as advocates of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.
For more information, contact media@ipas.org