350-thousand more midwives are needed globally
Baku, May 7 (AZERTAC). Six million deaths could be avoided each year in 58 developing countries if midwifery services are upgraded, according to a United Nations report.
The State of the World's Midwifery 2011 report was released by the United Nations Population Fund or UNFPA.
It says 350-thousand more midwives are needed globally.
In Vietnam, five to seven women still die almost every day due to pregnancy or childbirth. In Cambodia, there is an average of six midwives for one thousand live births.
Asia as a region has one of the most diverse regions in terms of midwifery needs. We have countries like where you're speaking from in Australia where of course you still have a shortage of midwives there, but many women have access to midwives and to services for midwifery services. Whereas in countries like Laos, only 20 per cent of women have access to any services at all, and Timor Leste equally the same and Bangladesh, and then in between that, there's a huge range. So, huge diversities and huge differences across the whole of the Asia region.
Sixty per cent of women will go through pregnancy and birth with absolutely no problems, so we don't want to make birth into a medical emergency. However, 15 per cent of women will have some kind of life threatening complication where they do need very expert, even down to having surgery, which is obviously beyond the role of the midwife. But unless you've got midwives there working with women, seeing them throughout their pregnancy, assisting them throughout their birth, then we can't identify which of those women are going to have a problem, because these problems are not easily identifiable, and even though the woman might be healthy, they're not always preventable.
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