2013 IntraHealth Annual Report

A Day in the Life of a Rural Midwife

Rebekah Miel — Fri, 23 May 2014 15:08:57 +0000

I wonder if the midwives I have met and worked with in rural East and Southern Africa know that today is the International Day of the Midwife.

In their honor, I wish to share the typical working day of one midwife I’ve observed. I’ll call her Jane. How does her day compare to yours?

Jane is the only midwife at a rural health center. She is in charge of the maternal and child health clinic and the maternity ward for women who arrive with abortion complications or for labor and delivery. She works with a nursing assistant she has trained to perform some antenatal and family planning services.

Jane graduated from midwifery school six years ago, where she completed a curriculum based on the International Confederation of Midwives’ competencies for midwifery practice. She has had in-service training on emergency obstetric care, postabortion care, family planning, and prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT).

She is very good at her job.

Five Key Steps to Making the Health Workforce a Post-MDG Priority

Rebekah Miel — Fri, 23 May 2014 15:08:49 +0000

This is a pivotal year for the international development community.

Fourteen years ago, world leaders gathered at the United Nations headquarters and set eight major goals to reduce extreme poverty and improve lives around the world. Those Millennium Development Goals provided a shared blueprint that unified the global community and accelerated progress like never before. The deadline for the goals is 2015—just around the corner.

The big question now is this: What development goals will we set next? And how can we make even faster progress toward global health and well-being?

Top 10 Global Health Issues to Watch in 2014

Rebekah Miel — Fri, 23 May 2014 15:08:34 +0000

The past year has given us plenty of global health successes to celebrate.

Worldwide, our lifespans are expanding. HIV medications are more widely available than ever. And many countries are meeting their Millennium Development Goals. Ethiopia, for example, a country once near the top of the list for child mortality, reached its Millennium Development Goal 4 ahead of schedule in 2013, reducing deaths of children under five by a whopping two-thirds in less than 25 years.

But we also have a lot of challenges ahead.

Last January, we looked into our crystal ball to focus on 10 key issues that would affect global health and health workers in 2013. Those same issues will be just as prominent in 2014, and we’ll continue to track them closely.

Now here are 10 more that will shape the coming year for IntraHealth International, and for all seven billion of us.