A scheme supporting newly graduated,
unemployed, and retired midwives to work in rural areas of Nigeria and provide
essential obstetric care has helped to improve maternal, newborn, and child
health and could potentially serve as a model for other low-income countries.
This
includes helping redistribute health workforce in low-income countries to
reduce the health inequities between urban and rural areas.
In a
Health in Action article in this week's PLoS Medicine, a
group of Nigerian researchers from the National Primary Health Care Development
Agency in Abuja, and the Federal Ministry of Health, describe the Midwife
Service Scheme in which midwives are posted for one year to selected primary
care facilities in hard-to-reach areas or among underserved populations with
the capacity to provide basic essential obstetric care linked to a secondary
health care facility that is able to provide comprehensive emergency obstetric
care.
The
authors say: "The [Midwife Service Scheme] Strategy of the Nigerian
government recognises that strategically redistributing and improving the skill
set of existing cadres of health workers is achievable on a large scale."
After
one year of the scheme, there was an uneven improvement in maternal, newborn,
and child health indices in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria and despite
major challenges to continuing the scheme—such as the retention, availability
and training of midwives,
and varying levels of commitment from state and local governments across
Nigeria—there are plans to overcome these challenges and further develop the
scheme.
The
authors say: "The initiative potentially serves as a model for other
developing countries within and outside sub-Saharan Africa who may need to
redistribute their health workforce to reduce the inequities that exist among
geographical zones and between urban and rural areas."
More
information: PLoS
Med 9(5): e1001211.doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001211
No comments:
Post a Comment