The WHO Guidance Global Network invites you to join a NEW online discussion forum.
8-16 November 2010
The World Health Organisation and partners are developing global guidance on enhancing the effectiveness of different cadres of health workers through evidence-based practice to improve maternal and newborn health care.
Theme: Crossing professional boundaries to define what safe and effective practices can be delivered by different cadres of health workers at the primary and community level to improve maternal and newborn health.
Register: to participate and receive a daily discussion digest, click here.
Reminder
MDG 4: Child health
MDG 5: Maternal health
To review the eight UN Millennium Development Goals, click here.
Readers may wonder what is the link between private midwifery services in Melbourne Australia, and the MDGs which address poverty and ill health of the world's most disadvantaged peoples.
ReplyDeleteI feel privileged to participate in a global forum such as this. My knowledge and skill is in midwifery, working in harmony with a woman's natural physiological processes in bearing and nurturing her children. This process is essentially the same, whether we are in a well resourced western city such as Melbourne, or in outback Australia, or in the slums of a city in a developing nation.
Our world cannot afford to lose the skill and knowledge of midwifery. Too often in the race to improve health outcomes, the project is taken over by gadgets and technology. Too often women are subjected to medical interventions which they don't need, and suffer consequences such as increasing rates of caesarean births. Mothers who lose confidence in the ability of their bodies in birthing their babies can struggle to learn the skills of mothering and can lack confidence in breastfeeding and nurture of their babies.
The importance of being involved in a forum such of this one, to me, is to present the evidence and the arguments supporting the midwife's role as a primary maternity care provider, and in identifying women who need specialist obstetric care in a timely way.