Missing midwives
Every year 48 million women in the world give birth without someone present who has recognised midwifery skills. This paper argues that the world needs more midwives and skilled birth attendants if the Millennium Development Goals to reduce child deaths by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters are to be met.
The authors find that the global shortage of 350,000 midwives means that many women and babies die from complications that could easily be prevented by skilled health workers and right equipment.
The paper highlights that rich and poor countries have already shown their support for boosting the number of midwives. Yet, these commitments must become a foundation for concrete action.
The document concludes it is essential to ensure more midwives, nurses, doctors and community health workers are recruited, trained, equipped, paid, supported and deployed to serve the poorest and most marginalised communities. Recommendations include:
- donor governments should put health workers at the heart of their ongoing development work
- indeed, every country with a critical health worker shortage should be supported to develop and implement an effective human resources plan
- nevertheless, donor governments must avoid actively recruiting health workers from countries with critical health worker shortages
- all governments with seats on the IMF board must push for flexible economic policies for poor countries so they can expand their health workforce
- the UN Secretary-General should be asked to host a health worker event at the UN General Assembly to make specific commitments to fill the international health worker gap
