Community Midwifery Education Program in Afghanistan
In the immediate post conflict period, Afghanistan's health services were in a deplorable and chaotic state. Access and utilization of reproductive health services and skilled care during pregnancy, childbirth, and the first month after delive...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/08/19406500/community-midwifery-education-program-afghanistan http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18701 |
| Summary: | In the immediate post conflict period,
Afghanistan's health services were in a deplorable and
chaotic state. Access and utilization of reproductive health
services and skilled care during pregnancy, childbirth, and
the first month after delivery are key to saving those women
at risk of dying due to pregnancy and childbirth
complications. In a society where women seek care only from
female providers, one barrier to expansion of services was
the lack of qualified female health workers who could be
deployed to remote health facilities. Very few midwives who
had trained in Kabul or other big cities were willing to
work in rural areas, and there were no education facilities
and too few female school graduates who could be trained in
the provinces. As maternal health was one of the top
priorities of the health sector, the shortage of midwives to
provide reproductive health services had to be tackled
urgently. Hence the Community Midwifery Education (CME)
Program was created. The program aimed not only to train
more midwives, but also to ensure both their initial
deployment in remote health facilities as well as good
retention rates. These aims were realized through the
creation of a new health cadre known as "community
midwives," along with new competency-based curricula;
establishment of CME schools in each province; relaxation of
the admission criteria for students; and establishment of a
strong accreditation board to ensure qualified midwives were
trained by the program. The program's success is
attributed to stakeholder strong engagement, equity, and
strengthened human resource for health. The program should
be expanded to address the continuing shortage of midwives.
The Mnistry of Public Health considers the program a
successful intervention and believes that there is great
potential to replicate this model to train other health
professionals and tackle the shortage of other human
resources for health. |
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