Hospitals run short of midwives

THERE is an acute shortage of midwives in hospitals and rural health facilities throughout the country.
The Health Department does not have proper data of how many midwives are there, where they are and if they are still working.
Health secretary Dr Clement Malau said under the new National Health Plan’s information communication technology policy, midwives would be registered under the tracking system.
He acknowledged the shortage of midwives as a contributing factor to the poor maternal mortality in the country.
The issue was raised during the briefing session on the establishment of the Safe Motherhood Alliance (SMALL) PNG by Community Development Minister Dame Carol Kidu at Parliament last Friday.
It was stressed during the meeting that community health workers (CHW) must be trained on how to supervise deliveries.
CHWs were said to be the first point of contact, especially in rural health facilities.
President of the PNG Midwifery Society and sister in charge of Port Moresby General Hospital’s labour ward, Sr Alice Baira, gave an account of her experience of how difficult it was for her and her counterparts to deal with more than 20 deliveries a day at the PMGH.
She said mothers from Central and Gulf were coming to PMGH to deliver because there were no midwives in their health centres.
Baira said another problem was the difficulty in getting drugs to treat mothers who had complications during delivery.
He said it was the responsibility of the hospital’s pharmacy to supply wards with drugs upon request but in the event that it did not, they had to go out of their way to get drugs.
“I have only two midwives and three trained acute nurses working at the ward. If I’m having difficulties getting drugs, I don’t know how the other centres are coping,” she said.
Baira also clarified the role of village birth attendants.
She said they were only trained to check pregnant women and refer them to a health centre if there was a need to but not to deliver babies.
Another problem she identified as a contributing factor to the maternal and infant mortality was that there were too many young girls and “old” women having babies which resulted in some complications.