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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Kabul, Afghanistan: In Afghanistan, a woman dies of pregnancy-related causes every 20 minutes; and approximately 60 out of every 1000 newborns die in the first month of life. However, on May 10th, 94 Afghan women marked the completion of a 2 year midwifery training program with a graduation ceremony in Kabul. These women are just a few of the over 700 newly trained midwives entering the health system in Afghanistan armed with knowledge and skills that will assist in reducing Afghanistan's maternal mortality and improve lives of pregnant women and newborns. Trained in a rigorous curriculum adopted by the Afghan Ministry of Public Health and implemented by Afghanistan's Institute of Health Sciences, the students completed clinical training at Kabul's Rabia Balkhi, Malalai, and Khair Khana hospitals. Under the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were denied the most basic human freedoms. For seven years, a country with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world trained no new midwives. Over the last three years the Rural Expansion of Afghanistan's Community-based Health Care (REACH) Program has assisted in doubling the number of pregnant women receiving care during delivery by a skilled birth attendant and tripled the number of skilled female health professionals working in its USAID funded clinics. These newly trained midwives will assist in increasing women's access to health services and making healthy lives for them and their children possible. The newly graduated Kabul midwives were trained through a USAID grant to the Agha Khan Development Network. In conjunction with the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, USAID has been working through the REACH Program to reduce the country's maternal and child mortality rate. Over the past three years the REACH Program, which is implemented by Management Sciences for Health (MSH) and whose Safe Motherhood Unit is staffed by JHPIEGO, has awarded NGO recipients some $67 million in USAID grants to increase access to quality health services for vulnerable women and children. |
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