As we get ready to turn the calendar over to a new year, (and if you think about it, also a new decade!) and say good bye to 2019, there is something to look forward to and celebrate on the maternal-infant health front!  The World Health Organization Assembly (WHO) has declared 2020 “The International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife.”  WHO and their partners are celebrating the work of the nurses and midwives, highlighting the challenging conditions they often face, and advocating for increased investments in the nursing and midwifery workforce.

Many places around the world lack enough health care providers, especially midwives, to provide safe and appropriate maternal-infant health care.  Parents and babies are dying from not being able to receive care. There are other parts of the world where there is “too much” care and healthy low-risk families are being seeing by obstetricians, who typically offer a higher level of care than is needed for the average pregnancy and birth.  This is not improving outcomes for parents or babies.  At the same time, in rural parts of the United States for example, there is an extreme shortage of obstetrical providers of any kind, maternity units are closing and families need to drive many hours and miles to receive any care at all.

In both of these situations, midwives would be a welcome and needed addition to the workforce.  A direct result will be better outcomes for parents and babies.

WHO’s International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife website is a robust collection of facts and resources for you to use and share throughout the year.  It also includes a downloadable campaign toolkit that makes raising awareness simple and straight forward no matter where you are located and who your audience is.  All of this is free for your use.

Please follow along with Lamaze International and Connecting the Dots as we join WHO in recognizing 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife and offer a collection of posts all year long that focus on current research and practices of these valuable health care professionals.

Published: December 20, 2019

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