The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has advised Nigeria to recruit additional 70,000 midwives to reduce maternal and child mortality in the country.
UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem, in a statement commemorating the 2023 International Day of the Midwife, said in addition to hiring more midwives, health authorities should allow them to be more involved in health care services.
IDM is May 5 and it is a day dedicated to celebrating midwives for their unwavering commitment to saving lives and ensuring the health and wellbeing of women and newborn babies.
The agency said the shortage of midwives and increasing brain drain had been linked to an ‘outrageous’ maternal mortality ratio of 512 per 100,000 live births in the country.
It added the shortage had been more acute in Northern Nigeria, “where essential maternal and reproductive health care needs are unmet”.
The organisation explained that evidence showed that competent midwives could provide 90 percent of essential sexual and reproductive health care.
It argued that midwives accounted for only 10 percent of the health workforce because they were underutilised and in short supply.
According to the UNFPA boss, “Many health systems continue to marginalise this mostly female workforce and treat midwives poorly in terms of pay, working conditions, and opportunities to cultivate skills. This, along with a global shortage of 900,000 midwives, reflects an assumption that they are not essential healthcare workers. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
UNFPA said midwives are important in a world where a woman dies every two minutes due to pregnancy or childbirth.
The agency said, having skilled midwives is one of the most important ways to avert preventable maternal and newborn deaths, adding that more mothers and babies survived and thrived in countries that invested in a capable midwifery workforce.
“Midwives provide essential information on sexual and reproductive health, including family planning, and help people navigate often-sensitive issues in a variety of contexts, including in humanitarian settings. Midwives are often the only healthcare workers serving people in hard-to-reach places.
“The consequences of not having enough skilled midwives are alarming. Decades of progress in preventing maternal deaths have ground to a halt. Every single year, 287,000 women globally lose their lives giving birth; 2.4 million newborns die, and an additional 2.2 million are stillborn,” she said.
UNFPA said nations would prevent two-thirds of maternal and newborn deaths and save over 4.3 million lives annually by 2035 by reducing the number of midwives deficit.
They revealed that it had helped countries educate and train 350,000 midwives in line with international standards to help improve the quality of care they provide.
Nigeria currently has over 250,000 midwives and nurses licensed by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN).
By Dare Akogun.
