Africa's midwives - all members of a noble profession

  • Midwife helping mother
African midwives belong to a truly noble profession. They use their skills, experience and dedication to preside over the gift to humanity of a new life.

A For millions of women and their families across the continent, they facilitate the miracle of childbirth. But not everyone is lucky enough to be attended by a skilled and educated midwife at birth. According to the World Health Organization there are about eighty million African women – 50% of all those that risk giving birth – who do so without the support of a trained and skilled midwife.  

And while most African midwives make heroic efforts to deliver new lives safely, too many are unable to reach their full life-saving potential, due to inadequate training and education. Finally, many African midwives work in very difficult conditions, with inadequate supplies of electricity, clean water, drugs and equipment. The fact that despite these barriers, many thousands of women take up the challenge to become a midwife, explains why it is entirely appropriate that Esther Madudu, a Ugandan midwife, has been nominated for the Nobel Prize. 

Physicists, chemists and novelists have been honoured by the Nobel Prize Committee, but society gives too little recognition and reward to the extraordinary contribution midwives make to the survival of humanity; and to the joy that a safe birth brings to mothers and their families. 

Charity Salima is a midwife whose contribution has been recognised by MamaYe Malawi. She experiences her work as “a calling”. 

“I felt deep within” she says, “that I needed to give something back to society. But it was also about leaving something behind, something that society will remember me by.” 

Few of us can say that. She says “delivering a baby is only the beginning of the journey in ensuring that babies survive.” 

Francess Forna trains midwives in the north of Sierra Leone in a town called Makeni. She told MamaYe Sierra Leone that she was inspired to do midwifery because “every time we lost a woman when we could have saved her, I felt it….I saw the importance of those skill sets in every health facility in this country. We needed to start providing the best care of our women”. Francess explains that midwives don’t just have to deploy evidence-based skills.  They have to develop a range of people and communication skills too. 

“Midwives are more than just clinicians, we are advocates, we are confidants to the women we serve”

 They are also pillars of the community. “The relationship we form with the community becomes a two-way stream: we help take care of them, and they take care of us too. Ibe is such a midwife. She worked tirelessly to save lives in her town, Iyienu, Anambra state, according to MamaYe Nigeria.Noting that local women preferred to use traditional birth attendants, and gave the hospital a wide berth, Nomso started community mobilization activities, going from house to house.

She encouraged pregnant women to attend antenatal care and to deliver their babies at the hospital to avoid unnecessary deaths. “Like magic, she started getting good responses. A ring of trust started forming as the women began listening to her and welcoming her in their homes."

In 2012 Nomsa was nominated for the Harvard School of Public Health’s Champions award. Charity Salima, Francess Forna and Nomso Ibe are skilled, altruistic and benevolent representatives of a great profession. 

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