Midwifery Society of Nepal (MIDSON) in collaboration with Ministry of Health is hosting the 2nd National Midwifery Conference on 4-5 May 2016. The theme of the conference is““Reaching the Unreached Women: Strengthening Midwifery Services in Post-Earthquake in line with Policy Decision 2006 in Nepal”. Among other partners, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is providing technical and financial assistance to organize the conference.
Every year, millions of women and newborns around the world are cared for by skilled midwives. Every day, thousands of babies are born, mothers are taken care of and lives are saved. To remind the world of these everyday achievements, every year May 5 is dedicated to International Day of the Midwife. The theme for the Day this year is “Women and Newborns: The Heart of Midwifery”. Midwives have a key role to play as the global community strives to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of reducing maternal and newborn mortality and ensuring universal access to healthcare services.
The Government of Nepal has already acknowledged the role of professional midwives in its Skilled Birth Attendant Long Term Policy (2006) as a crucial human resource for safe motherhood and reducing maternal and neonatal mortality by offering quality care to childbearing women. Besides, the National Health Policy 2014 has also highlighted the need for producing and deploying a midwifery workforce at the community level in order to provide quality sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health.
Strengthening these policies forward, this conference aims at sharing achievements made so far, lessons learnt, challenges and the way forward to ensure high quality women-friendly midwifery care in Nepal. It also highlight the:
1. Roles of midwives as crucial human resource during post-earthquake humanitarian response,
2. Issues and challenges of midwifery education in Nepal and
3. Importance of midwives to achieve sexual and reproductive health and rights in the agenda 2030 to attain Sustainable Development Goals
Nurses/midwives including health professionals, academicians, policy makers and political leaders are taking part in the conference to share evidence-based global practices, disseminate midwives’ role during post-earthquake humanitarian responses and partners’ engagement in achieving sexual and reproductive health and rights as well as to discuss issues, challenges and way forward on midwifery education in Nepal.
Key speakers from Ministry of Health, Nursing Council, academic institutions and NGOs/ INGOs will be the facilitators of the conference. Nepal has started hosting the midwifery conference since 2013. The two days conference is taking place at Radisson Hotel, Lazimpat.
Since its establishment, MIDSON has been working closely with the Government of Nepal and UNFPA in improving maternal and newborn health through enhancement of midwifery knowledge, skills and competencies of the midwifery service providers in the country.
