Sitting now in the main Congress Hall as the State of the World’s Midwifery 2014 is being launched at the International Confederation of Midwives’ Triennial Congress is pretty overwhelming. Firstly, we are surrounded by thousands of midwives from around the world. Anyone who has ever met a midwife will tell you they are a no-nonsense bunch.
Sitting now in the main Congress Hall as the State of the World’s Midwifery (SoWMY) 2014 is being launched at the International Confederation of Midwives’ Triennial Congress is pretty overwhelming.Firstly, we are surrounded by thousands of midwives from around the world (this is not an exaggeration – the capacity of the hall is 2,700 and there is an overflow into the next hall). Anyone who has ever met a midwife will tell you they are a no-nonsense bunch.Secondly, this launch marks the end of a year’s intensive work on the SoWMY report, collaborating with dozens of partners, drafting the questionnaire, liaising with 75 countries, cleaning and analysing data, writing, designing and communicating results.Thirdly, and most importantly, there is enough energy and enthusiasm in this room to get talking about every woman’s right to midwifery care all around the world, to anyone who will listen and also to those who won’t (don’t forget the no-nonsense trait).Some of the latter kind of talking with movers and shakers will probably be required, and as soon as possible: looking holistically at all skilled health professionals who provide care to women, mothers and babies, we found that only four of 73 high-burden countries have enough health workers to meet their need.If we believe in guaranteeing every woman’s right to health, “need” is the amount of working hours required to deliver the most essential interventions to every woman, mother and baby who needs them.If we are serious about universal health coverage, this is the human resource challenge we must meet.That means small but crucial changes in terms of the data we collect (especially on the number who leave their jobs every year) and our approach to workforce planning in order to enable us to plan our future midwifery workforce based on future needs, not one-size fits all benchmarks or transient initiatives.But this is not only a numbers game.Equally important to guaranteeing the right to midwifery care is that these health workers be geographically accessible, that they operate in a system where care is genuinely free at the point of service, that women feel socially and culturally comfortable accessing care from available health workers, and, above all, that these workers provide high quality care.It doesn’t make sense to pump more workers into the system without considering these other factors simultaneously. We all need to communicate this expectation to our fellow advocates, colleagues, leaders, and beyond, as the data shows there is still much progress to be made.Midwifery2030 can help us get there. What is Midwifery2030 you say?It’s a vision for how midwifery services will be accessed and experienced by women and their babies by 2030, and how the health system needs to change to make that happen.It’s a vision to save lives, secure rights, and make the whole health system more efficient while we’re at it. You can read more about it here, but its core values, beyond guaranteeing every woman the right to health, are that women need to be at the centre of the care provided and that health professionals need to be supported and support each other for this to happen.We hope you’ll find SoWMY 2014 a useful basis to start mobilising your community, schedule a policy chat with decision-makers, or make your day to day job of changing the world that bit more evidence-based.You might want to bring a midwife along with you – in fact you may have to because there’s no stopping this bunch right here. Laura Sochas – Technical officer for Evidence for Action (left) and Petra ten Hoope-Bender – Director RMNCH at ICS Integrare (right)