Healthy People, Healthy Community - COMMUNITY MIDWIFERY EDUCATION PROGRAM IN AFGHANISTAN

by Maryam Safi

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Vision:

The program’s vision is to see the realization and development of a vibrant and vital civil society in Afghanistan where the interest, concerns, and dignity of the civilians, the citizen, and the common man are taken seriously and more people have access to resources and power over choices.

Mission:

The program will contribute to bring about and support genuine and coherent development practice among people, organizations, and institutions working for the development of Afghan Nation through civil society development, capacity building, service delivery and research.  The program is committed to achieve its mission through transparent, equitable, professional, ethical and gender sensitive services with dignity to human being. Sustainable development is bringing desired positive changes in a community through enabling and capacitating the target communities to identify and respond to their perceived needs. This is the only way of bringing about a true sustainable and manageable Afghanistan-oriented development. Sustainable development is not something that could be (and neither should be) attained overnight, but extreme caution should be exercised to maintain provision of basic assistance to the community, while gradually introducing community-oriented developmental practices and disciplines.

Overview:

The program intends to contribute to the reduction of maternal and newborn mortality by increasing the quality of clinical services in the maternity wards of the regional hospitals in the country.   

The program is committed to achieve the above mentioned goal by graduating ‘20’ Community midwives in each province  from a competency-based midwifery-training course that adheres to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) training program over the Eighteen (18) months period. In the process of offering this training, the program expects to build the capacity of Midwifery Accreditation Board /MoPH as a training institution by improving the instructional and clinical supervision skills of Midwifery Accreditation Board instructors, the quality of the Midwifery Accreditation Board training facilities and Midwifery Accreditation Board / MoPH management systems.  Further, the program expects to assist the clinical facilities in the region in providing quality supervision and guidance to the trainees by offering “refresher training” programs to medical staff members. Finally, it expects to work with local partners, including health committees, NGOs and MoPH employees to identify and select trainees and to ensure that they are successfully deployed in appropriate clinical settings after the completion of the training period in their own origins.

Goal of the Project:

The goal of CME is to assist high quality community midwife training programs that will prepare skilled rural providers of maternal and newborn health services, and support the midwife/midwifery student in the classroom, hospital and community.

General Objective:

To train and graduate ‘20’ competent community midwives who are selected from remote and rural areas of the provinces over ‘24’ months period.

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