<\/p>\n
Midwifery educator Duncan Shikuku will never forget the day in 2011 when a new mother was rushed into the hospital where he worked, carried by her family.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was listless and bleeding. Within minutes, we had lost her,\u201d Mr. Shikuku says. \u201cNo one should have to tell a family that their loved one has died, especially when it didn’t need to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a new\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0from the United Nations, \u201cTrends in maternal mortality\u201d, nearly 800 maternal deaths occur each day \u2013\u00a0and almost all of these deaths are preventable. Although global maternal mortality has decreased by more than one third over the last two decades, hundreds of thousands of women and girls \u2013 mostly living in sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia \u2013 continue to perish every year from avoidable complications like bleeding and infections, simply because long-known solutions are out of reach.<\/p>\n “It is unacceptable that so many women continue to die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth,\u201d said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. \u201cWe can and must do better.”<\/p>\n In Kenya,\u00a0a large\u00a0majority of births<\/a>\u00a0that took place in the country between 2018 and 2020 were overseen by skilled providers and occurred at health facilities. But these figures were higher for wealthier, more educated women in cities than for those with fewer resources and less education in rural areas. Meanwhile, one third of women reported completing fewer than the four or more antenatal care visits recommended by health experts to improve maternal health outcomes.<\/p>\n The woman who came to Mr. Shikuku\u2019s hospital had given birth at home and only had one antenatal appointment. \u201cI wish this was just one story \u2013\u00a0but it isn\u2019t,\u201d Mr. Shikuku said. \u201cA community midwife could have saved her, but there just aren\u2019t enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Educate midwives,\u00a0save lives<\/strong><\/p>\n Midwives educated to international standards, who are licensed, regulated, fully integrated into health systems and working in interprofessional teams can help avoid about two thirds of all maternal and newborn deaths. But a global deficit, amounting to an\u00a0estimated 900,000 missing providers<\/a>, risks the lives of millions.<\/p>\n Addressing this shortage requires scaling up investment in midwives\u2019 including in their education and training. It also requires\u00a0confronting gender biases\u00a0<\/a>that can lead to poor pay and a lack of support for providers.<\/p>\n Mr. Shikuku, a nurse-midwife turned midwifery educator, says these issues have resulted in a dearth of midwives in Kenya. \u201cMany aspiring medical professionals choose another career because midwifery is not recognised as a high-status job, and the sector desperately lacks investment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n To achieve his aim of ensuring no more women die in childbirth, Mr. Shikuku \u2013 supported by the\u00a0Alliance to Improve Midwifery Education<\/a>\u00a0(AIME), of which UNFPA is a founding member\u00a0 \u2013 helped design essential e-training targeting midwifery educators and maternity care providers\u00a0 on topics related to the major causes of maternal mortality. More than 43,000 health care providers have already participated in the initiative, which launched in 2022.<\/p>\n “The new e-modules we designed are a game-changer,\u201d Mr. Shikuku says. \u201cThey are training midwives and health professionals on issues like pre-eclampsia, offering life-saving information that can give every woman a safer, more positive experience during pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n One million lives on the line<\/strong><\/p>\n According to the new UN report, the world\u2019s current rate of progress in reducing maternal deaths must accelerate or else risk the lives of one million women by 2030.<\/p>\n In Kenya, Mr. Shikuku is leading the charge not just to safeguard maternal lives, but also to ensure women are given respectful, compassionate care.<\/p>\n “Some women tell me that they fear the childbirth experience, but we can change that,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can give women their right to proper health care at the most vulnerable and intimate time in their life.\u201d<\/p>\n It is clear that for many, these efforts make all the difference; one mother even named her son after Mr. Shikuku, saying he had given her a beautiful birth experience.<\/p>\n “I still get messages from mothers 10 years after I delivered their babies \u2013 they never forget, and neither do I,\u201d he said. \u201cMidwives are the bridge between pregnancy and life in the outside world. What could be more important?<\/p>\n \u201cI just wish everyone could see it too.”<\/p>\n Distributed by APO Group on behalf of UNFPA – East and Southern Africa.<\/i><\/p>\n Source<\/a> Midwifery educator Duncan Shikuku will never forget the day in 2011 when a new mother was rushed into the hospital where he worked, carried by her family. \u201cShe was listless and bleeding. Within minutes, we had lost her,\u201d Mr. Shikuku says. \u201cNo one should have to tell a family that their loved one has died, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":146045,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.africa-newsroom.com\/files\/large\/4ea6794dd42bc95","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4262],"tags":[258,256,4263,11058,24969,5985,31172,5140,5731,10633,8485,10165,8823,257,26417,7301,45336,254,6460],"class_list":["post-146044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-angola","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-angola-news","tag-bridge","tag-duncan","tag-ease","tag-educator","tag-fears","tag-health","tag-helping","tag-lives","tag-maternal","tag-midwives","tag-news","tag-providers","tag-save","tag-shikuku","tag-south-africa-today","tag-womens"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.africa-newsroom.com\/files\/large\/4ea6794dd42bc95","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa Angola<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"