Health and Family Welfare Minister Sardar Md Sakhawat Hossain has set out the government’s commitment to raise the allocation for health in stages to 5% of GDP and to recruit 25,000 midwives into the public health system within the next few years.
He was speaking on Sunday, 11 October, in Berlin, Germany, at a ministerial round table titled “South-South partnership for midwifery acceleration and health security: from crisis to resilience”.
The minister said midwives play an important part in ensuring safe, dignified and life-saving healthcare for every mother and newborn. Through them the standard of antenatal care, safe delivery, emergency referral and postnatal care can be improved. The government regards investment in midwives not as an expense but as an effective national investment in reducing the deaths of mothers and newborns and lowering overall health costs.
He said the facilities of 62 teaching institutions in the country are being modernised to improve midwifery education, and steps have been taken to introduce hands-on training, simulation-based teaching and technology-based learning.
The minister said regional cooperation is very important in dealing with the shortage of health workers. To that end Bangladesh is strengthening the exchange of knowledge and of teachers and joint training with Nepal and Pakistan.
He praised the contribution of development partners, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in particular, to expanding maternal and reproductive health services.
Noting the important part midwives play in climate-related disasters and in humanitarian assistance for the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar, he said they work on the front line to keep life-saving maternal health services going even in crises. The government of Bangladesh is committed to continuing to build midwives’ skills and invest in them to protect women, children and the country’s future economy.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report