|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|||
|
|
||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kabul, Afghanistan: More than 200 women attended the Inaugural Congress of the Afghan Midwives Association, held May 4 and 5th in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Association's newly-elected president, Pashtoon Afzar, Midwifery Education Manager of the USAID-funded REACH Program's Safe Motherhood Unit, opened the Congress with the Association's mission: to bring "health and peace to the families of Afghanistan" through promoting and strengthening Afghanistan's midwifery profession and the role of the midwife. At present, 91% of all births in Afghanistan take place without the presence of a trained birth attendant.
The Association has applied for membership in the International Confederation of Midwives, which encompasses 85 midwifery organizations in 75 countries. ICM's Deputy Director, Judi Brown, was present to convey the Confederation's congratulations and support.
The graduation in April of 228 women trained in a two-year course at Afghanistan's Institutes of Health Sciences under a $6.7 USAID grant awarded through REACH has raised the number of skilled, professional midwives in Afghanistan from 467 to 715. At least 1500 more are needed. Students from a number of Afghan provinces where REACH technically supports midwifery education joined practicing midwives in attending the Congress. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Since
its initial organization by 15 professional midwives meeting at Kabul's
Rabia Balkhi Hospital in June 2004, the Afghan Midwives Association has
grown to include midwifery representatives from throughout the country.
Anne Richter, representing the American College of Nurse Midwives, likened
the AMA's Inaugural Congress to "a birth that, like all births,
required a lot of labor and hard work." 
At
the closing ceremony, Dr. Mohd. Amin Fatemi, Afghanistan's Minister of
Public Health, and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzhad called midwives indispensable
in the country's on-going efforts to improve Afghan maternal and child
health and spoke of the two countries' continued commitment and cooperation
in that effort. The US Congress recently earmarked an additional $12
million for midwifery training in Afghanistan.