A bridge between communities and traditional health facilities, midwives deliver vital maternal health services that are key to reducing maternal deaths and making childbirth safer in remote and underserved areas, and in humanitarian crises. Midwives not only save lives, they also empower women and couples to make informed and healthy choices.
“Midwives are public health heroes, ensuring that a woman can have a healthy pregnancy, safe childbirth and essential care for her newborn – among the most basic human rights.” UNFPA Executive Director, Dr. Natalia Kanem said in her statement of the International Midwife Day.
Educating and enabling midwives is a smart, cost-effective and sustainable way to bring us closer to achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services — a crucial target within the broader 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In Lao PDR, since 2015, through UNFPA-supported programmes with the Ministry of Health, over 70 midwifery teachers across the country have been trained based on global standard to provide quality midwifery education to students. This year in June, the Lao Association of Midwives will celebrate the achievements of Lao midwives as well discuss how to further strengthen its functions for midwifery professional development.
In addition to the midwifery teachers, around 1800 midwives have also been trained and are progressively being deployed to serve women in the furthest of villages and communities. The midwives will allow women to plan and manage pregnancies and deliver safely.
Ms. Mariam Khan UNFPA Representative said ”We are very pleased with the results of our collaboration with the Government of Lao and other health partners in support of the midwifery programme and we look forward to continue supporting the health system reform including the essential role of midwives towards delivery of universal health care”
In 2019, UNFPA and partners celebrate the 25th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), where 179 governments adopted and placed human as a centre of development in Cairo, 1994, moving from a numbers driven approach to family planning towards a focus on women’s ability to make voluntary informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and rights.
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UNFPA is the United Nations reproductive health and rights agency. It is the leading agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. UNFPA promotes sexual and reproductive health and rights, particularly maternal health, in over 150 countries, as well as working to end harmful practices such as child marriage, and supporting population data collection and analysis.
For more information, please contact:
Ms. Kay amphone Singhalath
Telephone: 021 267 680 Mob: 020 77776597
Email: Singhalath@unfpa.org
