The fourth Global Midwifery Symposium will take place in Vancouver, ahead of the Women Deliver conference. Co-hosted by the UNFPA, the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) and the World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with other United Nations, civil society, and private sector partners, the symposium is calling for enabling environments that can transform maternal and newborn health, saving lives.
Symposium attendees will address the importance of investing in midwifery education and regulation, as well as the need to create enabling environments for professional midwives. A midwifery call to action will also be launched.
"The evidence is clear. When midwives are educated to international standards, and midwifery includes the provisions of family planning, it could avert over 80% of all maternal deaths, stillbirths and newborn deaths. There is also strong evidence to support that women want individualized and respectful continuity of care provided by a professionally trained and qualified midwife close to where they live," the call to action states.
"We call for continued advocacy for policies that increase the midwifery workforce but with increased focus on providing an educational, regulatory and practice infrastructure that is consistent with a midwifery model of care. We call for increased support to the development of regulatory structures that ensure that midwives have a scope of practice (SOP) consistent with ICM competencies and the needs of women in their communities. We call for prioritized implementation of the action plan to strengthen quality midwifery education outlined in the recently released Framework for Action- Strengthening Quality Midwifery Education for Universal Health Coverage 2030."
