KARACHI: 80pc deliveries take place at home, moot told
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, June 17: Speakers at a seminar on Saturday stressed the need for strengthening midwifery to reduce the complexities of childbirth at homes, particularly in rural areas.
Since doctors are not available for the management of deliveries at home, it were the midwives who could play important role towards safety of mother and neonatal, provided they were trained and skilled adequately for the purpose, they added.
The seminar was jointly organised by National Committee for Maternal and Neonatal Health and the Midwifery Association of Pakistan, with the support of the Pakistan Initiative for Mother’s and Newborn, a USAID project.
Speaking as chief guest, Sindh Women Development Minister Dr Saeeda Malik said that the high mortality rate of mother and infants due to pregnancy complications had been a source of concern for long, but the government had now started addressing the situation.
In the context of rural population, the minister said that home delivery was a culture which could not be done away with. However, she said that it could be made safer both for mother and newborns by providing more education and incentives to midwives. Trained midwives were the primary health care facilitators, who could help reduce the maternal death rate, she added.
The president of National Committee for Maternal and Neonatal Health, Dr Sadiqua Jafarey, said that 80 per cent of the deliveries took place at home in the country, out of which 95 per cent were attended by untrained dais and traditional birth attendants.
“We need to increase the number of trained and skilled attendants gradually so that the millennium goal targets related to reduction of child mortality rate and improvement of maternal health could be achieved by 2015,” she added.
She said that at present the percentage of skilled birth attendants ranged from 18 to 20, which needed to be increased up to 90 per cent by the year 2015 as Pakistan had committed being a signatory to millennium development goals charter.
Counting the importance of midwives, she said that since they could greatly assist in ensuring accessible and quality maternal health, the government should streamline midwifery education in the country and improve the status of midwives as well.
“A competency based training of all skilled birth attendants, including doctors, was the only answer to unsafe deliveries through untrained and unskilled dais,” she said.
Tracing the history of midwifery in Pakistan, the president of Midwifery Association of Pakistan, Imtiaz Kamal, said that initially it were the Christian missions and philanthropists who made substantial contribution to the development of midwifery system.
She said that it was unfortunate that no serious efforts were made for updating the curriculum and training programmes meant for midwives. She called for giving a client-centred and skill-based curriculum and qualified teachers to birth attendants during their education. The role of midwives could be increased by providing them health education and health promotion activities, she remarked.
