KARACHI, Nov 24: Need to train more professional midwives is being increasingly felt in the country where the rate of maternal mortality is one in every 20 minutes.

Sources in the National Committee on Maternal Health stress the need for trained personnel to provide care during maternity cycle, saying that obstetricians cannot not fill the gap as they are expensive to train and a majority of them prefer to work in cities. Moreover, it is neither necessary nor possible to have a doctor to manage a normal pregnancy and childbirth,

They say that training midwives is less daunting a task than doubling the number of medical colleges in the country.

With reference to training the practising traditional birth attendants (TBAs), they say that attempts made in this regard have not improved the situation.

The process to streamline training programmes for midwives or starting a midwifery school is registered to require, on part of the Pakistan Nursing Council, a 20-maternity-bed institution and admission of at least 200 maternity cases in a year.

The centre also requires a resident medical officer, preferably an obstetrician, one head nurse and six charge nurses for the ward, two head nurses and six charge nurses for the labour room and two charge nurses for each operation theatre.

Many hospitals need these prerequisites and with some additional input they can organise a school of midwifery, for which guidelines could be provided to them by the NCMH, Maternity and Child Welfare Association of Pakistan, Pakistan Nursing Council, Provincial Directorates of Nursing or any existing school of midwifery in different towns.

Experts reminded that midwives are the linchpins of maternity services in many developed and developing countries and well trained midwives are, in their own rights, specialists of normal obstetrics.

Historically, it was the well trained midwives who reduced maternal mortality rates in European countries before the advent of antibiotics, blood transfusion and caesarean section.—APP