Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

T&T As­so­ci­a­tion of Mid­wives (TTAM) is call­ing on all mid­wives to join the fight for im­proved ma­ter­nal health­care in T&T.

This call came at the TTAM's an­nu­al con­fer­ence, that was re­cent­ly held at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain. The theme of this year's con­fer­ence was Mid­wives, A Voice For Fam­i­lies.

The key speak­er at this year's con­fer­ence was pres­i­dent of the Nether­lands-based In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fed­er­a­tion of Mid­wives, Frances Day-Stirk. In her ad­dress, she demon­strat­ed why it is im­per­a­tive that mid­wives should be re­gard­ed as an in­te­gral part of ma­ter­nal health­care.

She urged mid­wives to present them­selves as a ne­ces­si­ty, by tak­ing their own pro­fes­sion se­ri­ous­ly in or­der to gain re­spect.

Day-Stirk, who was vis­it­ing T&T for the first time, said it was em­bar­rass­ing how poor­ly the Caribbean was rep­re­sent­ed in the glob­al con­sul­ta­tion on pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty mid­wifery care. The re­port, pub­lished in Oc­to­ber, showed there was on­ly one par­tic­i­pant from T&T.

"What does that tell you? We as mid­wives have to get se­ri­ous about our pro­fes­sion," she said. "No one will hear our voic­es if we our­selves don't have a voice."

Day-Stirk added, "Mid­wives, we are the voic­es for fam­i­lies. And we must lis­ten to them.

And our de­ci­sion-mak­ers must lis­ten to our voic­es if they re­al­ly want to im­prove qual­i­ty health­care."

One is­sue the leader of the world's 400,00 mid­wives from 116 na­tions spoke out against is the rough treat­ment many moth­ers re­ceive from health­care pro­fes­sion­als at pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions. Day-Stirk point­ed to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion's (WHO) state­ment on the pre­ven­tion and elim­i­na­tion of dis­re­spect and abuse dur­ing fa­cil­i­ty�based child­birth and said every woman has the right to dig­ni­fied and re­spect­ful care.

"I was try­ing to take a pic­ture of a poster I saw along the high­way, I think it is from your equal op­por­tu­ni­ties com­mis­sion, which talked about no­body should feel in­tim­i­dat­ed or be hu­mil­i­at­ed...did you see that poster? I think I am go­ing to have to get it be­fore I leave....it is a very good one," she said.

The Ja­maica-born se­nior mid­wife spoke about the im­por­tance of two key UN strate­gies, the Glob­al Strat­e­gy for Women's, Chil­dren's and Ado­les­cents' Health 2016-2030 and the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDG).

Un­der the Glob­al Strat­e­gy, the UN has set a tar­get of re­duc­ing the glob­al ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty rate to 70 per 100,000 live births. Day-Stirk said T&T's med­ical sta­tis­tics in­di­cate that the ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty rate in Trinidad has gone up.

"The tar­get is 12 per thou­sand live births. Your cur­rent stats show a fig­ure of 13.2, but your Min­is­ter wants it to be a lot low­er," Day-Stirk said.

Health min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh, who al­so spoke at the event, said his of­fice had plans to ap­point a di­rec­tor of women's health at the Min­istry.

Quot­ing from the 2014 State of the World Mid­wifery Re­port, Day-Stirk re­mind­ed the mid­wives of some of the key el­e­ments of good ma­ter­nal care.

They in­clude qual­i­ty ser­vice; ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty for all women of re­pro­duc­tive age; gov­ern­ment's role in health­care; da­ta col­lec­tion; end­ing gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion; and, the im­por­tance of all health­care providers work­ing to­geth­er.

"We as mid­wives need to raise our voic­es for fam­i­lies to high­light the ter­ri­ble un­nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tions that are tak­ing place," Day-Stirk re­it­er­at­ed.

She said mid­wives have the so­lu­tions to change the ex­pe­ri­ence of ma­ter­nal care, to put an end to the so­cio-cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers, eco­nom­ic bar­ri­ers and pro­fes­sion­al bar­ri­ers. How­ev­er she warned if mid­wives don't have a voice these so­lu­tions will sit with them and go nowhere.

"Please recog­nise the im­por­tance of your voice."