Women Making a Difference

Midwives Work to Improve Services for Women

Creation of a national midwives association in Yemen gives women an active voice in improving maternal and child health outcomes. Source: Cheri Rassas

The Yemeni Midwives Association (YMA) has established itself – and its nearly 1,000 members – as a key player in supporting the midwife profession and enabling midwives to improve delivery of reproductive health (RH) and family planning (FP) services to reduce high maternal and child mortality and morbidity. The association is also crucial in changing health outcomes for women by providing them with the health care they want.

To better understand the needs of its members, the YMA surveyed midwives in five governorates and linked survey data to existing health sector geographic information systems. The association is using this information to analyze gaps in RH and FP services to better target their assistance. The YMA intends to lobby the government for midwife positions in districts without sufficient providers and provide the necessary business skills and tools to effectively deliver RH/FP services in a sustainable manner by operating community-based private practices from the midwives' homes or other service delivery points such as closed health units.

Yemen has the least favorable health indicators in the Middle East, with a maternal mortality rate of 365/100,000 live births, an infant mortality rate of 76/1,000, and a fertility rate of 6.2 children per woman. Combating these indicators is compounded by women's preference to be seen by a female provider, of which there are very few, especially in rural areas.

Given the acute need for more trained female health providers of maternal and child health (MCH) and RH/FP services, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-supported Health Systems 20/20 project conducted a rapid needs assessment to determine midwife training needs. As a result of the assessment, supervised training workshops are conducted by the association for midwives in a targeted governorate supported by the 20/20 project through a grant agreement between the association and the project that focused on life-saving procedures during the prenatal period, labor and delivery, and the postpartum period, as well as family planning and counseling. The association intends to scale up the training to other governorates as possible.

The association is supported by USAID through the Health Systems 20/20 project.

Story provided by USAID's Health Systems 20/20 project, implemented by Abt Associates

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