Midwives asked to enroll for additional trainings

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The State Minister of Health in-charge of Primary Health Care Dr Joyce Moriku Kaducu has called for more training of midwives.

Currently of the 20,475 midwives registered with the Nurses and Midwifery Council, only 22 have degrees in midwifery, 6,000 have diplomas whereas 13,000 only practice with certificates.

According to Kaducu, majority of midwives in Uganda are certificate holders followed by diploma holders.

Over the years, concerns of people going for a midwifery course as a last resort have lingered with many starting with pursuing certificates courses with only a few upgrading later.

Kaducu says that midwives have been at the forefront of reducing Uganda’s maternal mortality figures from the highs of 438 per 100,000 live births to 336 per 100,000 live births currently.

The responsibilities of a midwife don’t stop at helping a woman deliver at the time of labour but rather encompasses a woman during pregnancy, labour, and the postpartum period, as well as caring for the new-born.

Explaining why the majority of them practice with only certificates, Sarah Namyalo, the President of the Private Midwives Association says that midwifery as bachelors course is a new phenomenon as five years ago the highest they could go is a diploma level.

“Midwifery as a bachelor’s course started recently with Lira, then Agakhan and now many universities have joined in. The master’s programme is currently only at Makerere University and five of our members are pursuing masters”, she said the challenge with upgrading is that they have to foot their university bills and yet they receive only peanuts in remuneration.

For the private midwives running maternity homes, she says they have to grapple with taxation and compete with quack providers and traditional birth attendants in the community to offer services.

Meanwhile, in Jinja, midwives at the Jinja Regional Referral hospital have expressed challenges of poor pay.

The midwives note that they execute their duties under demoralizing conditions and a pay rise will better their lives.

Francis Achan, a midwife says that midwives are a group of health workers who are never recognized which has deprived them of equal opportunities.

Agirie Aligawesa, the assistant commissioner of nursing at the hospital says that the government should devise means of increasing the midwives’ pay which she says will improve their standards of living.

Angela Namala, the hospital’s deputy director says that the hospital has a total number of 35 midwives who attend to an average of 500 mothers a month.

She adds that such a committed workforce requires better remuneration to ensure that, they sustain their lives.

The International Day of the midwife was marked under the theme; ‘ Midwives with women, celebrate, demonstrate, Mobilize, Unite, Our time is now’.

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