….… organise sensitisation workshop for students midwives and nurses
By Bashir Hassan Abubakar
As the World marks 2025 International Day of the Midwife (IDM), Bauchi State Ministry of Health and the State Primary Health Care Development Board (BSPHCDB), in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) have organised a one day sensitisation workshop for students of the Aliko Dangote College of Nursing Sciences Bauchi.
Declaring the workshop open at the conference hall of the school, Bauchi State Commissioner of Health, Dr. Sani Muhammad Dambam described midwives as community champions that provide maternal and child care at both facility and community levels.
Dr. Muhammad said Bauchi State Government is grateful for the contributions of healthcare service providers especially midwives whose contribution has made a significant impact in the State healthcare system.
He then called on the Student nurses and midwives to pay attention to the presentations during the engagement with a view to learning something new that could add value in their work after school completion.
The Commissioner also commended UNFPA for their support in organising the activity and the role they are playing in supporting the State in the sexual, reproductive health and family planning components of the State’s healthcare services.
In a keynote address, UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem said midwives are playing critical roles as part of every humanitarian and national disaster response in providing life-saving and cost-effective way services to reduce preventable maternal deaths.
Represented by Deborah Tabara, the Gender/Reproductive Health Analyst, and Bauchi State Programme Officer, Dr. Kanem said that oftentimes, midwives travel across remote and dangerous terrain to ensure essential services that save lives and safeguard health and human rights.
According to Dr Kanem, Midwives can provide 90 per cent of essential sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health services, including family planning, and also gives support to survivors of gender-based violence, which increase during crises times.
Dr. Kanem lamented that, “Chronic underinvestment in midwifery has translated to inadequate training, a lack of infrastructure and supplies, and low salaries – barriers that are present in times of stability and only grow worse in times of crisis”.
The UNFPA Executive Director revealed that, “Recent severe funding cuts to humanitarian assistance threaten to widen these gaps, with tragic impacts on women and girls in some of the world’s most challenging places. Already, midwives are reporting rising death rates among women and newborns in conflict zones and fragile contexts, where over 60 per cent of global maternal deaths are reported”.
“On this International Day of the Midwife, we call on governments and donors to join UNFPA and partners in the Midwifery Accelerator Initiative, which aims to increase financial and programmatic investments in midwives – and the systems that support them – before more lives are lost.
“Midwives save lives. Let us work together to end the global shortage of nearly a million midwives and to ensure that we can end preventable maternal deaths once and for all”, enthused Dr. Kanem.
Presentations by resource persons were made in topics around Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health+Nutrition (RMNCAH+N), Gender Based Violence (GBV) and Mental Health.
The presentations elicited comments, contributions and questions from the students midwives and nurses.