In the News
Ministers Briefed on 'State of the World's Midwifery' at World Health Assembly
- 19 May 2011
GENEVA - Some 120 representatives of Ministries of Health and development partners gathered during a side breakfast meeting at the World Health Assembly to discuss the preliminary findings of the first-ever report – The State of the World’s Midwifery – to be published in June 2011 through an initiative led by UNFPA and supported by 27 partners.
Every year thousands of women die in the first month of their life due to pregnancy related causes and 3.6 million children. While midwives have been recognized as crucial to the provision of quality services to women and children along the continuum of care, they remain inadequate in numbers, distribution and with poor competency levels. The first-ever State of the World’s Midwifery report seeks to provide evidence on the availability of midwifery services in 58 countries with the greatest burden of maternal and newborn mortality, and provide recommendations on how to scale-up health personnel with midwifery competencies
Read the full story on the Partnership for Maternal, Child and Newborn Health website.
