UNFPA Donates Birthing Kits

UNFPA Country Representative, Marielle Sanders handed over Life Saving obstetric equipment to the Port Moresby General Hospital at the Area Medical Store at Badili yesterday, 20th July.

The 40 boxes containing sterilizing equipment and accessories for the use of midwives at the hospital is a step forward towards addressing the maternal and infant mortality in the country.

According to the data from the National Health Information System (NHIS) 2021, a total of 10,637 live babies were born across the national. Less than 97, 161 babies were born in a health facility while 1338 babies were born in a village, 5,138 were delivered on the way before reaching the nearest health facility.

POM Gen hospital is in need of birthing equipment and UNFPA is happy to deliver and there’s forty pieces here,” Marielle Sander – UNFPA Country Rep said.

Complications arising during pregnancy and during the process of labor, birthing and postnatal period were numerous. Last year 309 mothers died from pregnancy related causes across the nation and 2,764 deliveries were still birth.

A total of 256 neonates have died from neonatal sepsis and 7 from neonatal tetanus.

Sr. Mary Sitaing – Vice President, PNG Midwifery Society said one thing that the PNG Midwifery Society is advocating for is ‘respectful care’.

“We want the best for the women when they come into our care for labour so we want to deal directly with them, especially the society we’ve been talking on midwifery respectful care for all women regardless of what. So we’ve been saying, if you come and you are mistreated by a midwife, you communicate with us directly so we can deal with these issues,” Sitaing assured the women giving birth at the hospital.

Though Midwifery is a lifesaving skill that needs a lot of attention, PNG health service is a long way away from satisfying the world standard. Marielle Sander expressed are a  couple of obstacles contributing to not having enough midwives in the country.

“One is that currently there is a 18 month programme where first you have to be educated as a nurse and then you have to practice as a nurse for a couple of years and only after that are you able to do this post graduate qualification in midwifery. And unfortunately, at minimum it takes about 8 years before we have a midwife who can pass through that process,” Sander said.

She said as the way it is now, when a general nurse goes on to commit to taking up specialized training on midwifery, that is one less nurse in the health system, so she suggests that there needs other ways to train the midwives and one of the ways to do this is to introduce a direct entry midwifery course.

“UNFPA is working on this approach with the Midwifery Society and the National Department of Health, because nurses can’t be taken away from their important role.

“The midwife that needs to be trained, also has to have basic nursing skills because many of them will be posted out to the rural areas so this is what we are looking at now.” Sander added. 

Author: 
Frieda Kana