'Specialist care during delivery must'

Bangladesh’s available workforce of doctors, midwives and nursing personnel can provide only 41 percent of the care mothers and their newborn needed, finds an UN estimate.

Bangladesh has the world’s one of the largest number of unskilled-hands-attended deliveries as statistics show nearly 70 percent mothers deliver at home.

At least 194 women per 100,000 die giving birth.

Bangladesh did not have stand-alone midwives for handling deliveries until recently.

File Photo

The State of World’s Midwifery 2014 report was launched globally in June, but UNFPA Dhaka office released its Bangladesh report on Thursday.

The report focused on 73 countries, which account for  92 percent  the world’s maternal and newborn deaths.

However, it found only 42 percent of the world’s medical, midwifery and nursing personnel are available to women and newborn infants in these countries.

They estimated the unfulfilled  need by calculating the time medical and nursing professionals gave to women and their infants during and after births with the actual time they needed.

The report calculated the statistics collected in 2012 when Bangladesh did not have stand-alone midwives.

Bangladesh’s nurses used to receive midwifery training  at maternity wards of the hospitals . UNFPA calls them ‘nurses-midwives’.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2010 pledged to train 3,000 stand-alone midwives by 2015 and the government started to work on it  which the report lauds..

So far more than 1,000 such midwives have been trained up and many others are on way.

The government has recently created 3,000 separate posts for them, Halima Akhter, president of Bangladesh Midwifery Society said.

UNFPA in the report showed that if the number of midwifes, physicians, and nurses were doubled by 2020 and their efficiency improved 2 percent per year, they would be able to meet the needs of 93 percent mothers and newborns by 2030.

New WHO Representative in Dhaka Dr N Paranietharan said the purpose of creating separate midwifery positions was to post them at rural places, where most mothers needing maternity care are located.

He suggested that the government should promote them “step by step”.

Additional Secretary for health AN Shamsuddin Azad Chowdhury said investing in midwives frees doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to focus on specific  needs.

“So, we consider (it) an investment,” he said.