Midwives speaking out on COVID-19: The ICM Global Survey has been peer-reviewed and published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. 

The paper is now open-access and explores the impact of the pandemic through the experiences of 101 #midwifery organisations worldwide. Representing midwives’ experiences in scientific publications is critical in ensuring midwives’ voices are heard, acknowledged and considered in health policy.

Educated and skilled midwives are required to improve maternal and newborn health and reduce stillbirths. There are three main approaches to the pre-service education of midwives: direct entry, post-nursing and integrated programmes combining nursing and midwifery. Within these, there can be multiple programmes of differing lengths and qualifications, with many countries offering numerous pathways.

ICM's Chief Executive Dr. Sally Pairman, Midwife Advisor for Education Erin Ryan, and Midwife Advisor Martha Bokosi contributed to this study, which explores the history, rationale, benefits and disadvantages of multiple pre-service midwifery education in Malawi and Cambodia. The objectives are to investigate the differences in education, roles and deployment as well as how key informants perceive that the various pathways influence workforce, health care, and wider health systems outcomes in each country.  

This month, in Midwives Stand #WithWomen, the holiday series, we will align with the #GivingEveryTuesday campaign to spotlight ICM member associations worldwide and demonstrate why #midwives are uniquely positioned to improve midwife-led care, enhance #GenderEquality in healthcare, and promote quality childbirth services around the world.

We hope you will join us in rallying awareness and funds for professional midwives’ associations and the women and families they serve.  

WithWomen is the first global fundraising platform providing individual donors with the opportunity to directly support the life-enhancing, life-saving work of ICM and its more than 140 midwives’ associations.

The funds raised by WithWomen will be used towards:  

• Strengthening the capacity of ICM midwives’ associations
• Strengthening education of midwives around the world
• Providing direct, financial support to member associations in need, particularly those impacted by climate and/or humanitarian crisis. 

One way to understand key developments in midwifery is to look at the career of former ICM President, Bridget Lynch. This midwife educator from Toronto, Canada, was the president of ICM from 2008 to 2011. During her term, there were significant advances for the ICM, including the development of global standards in education and regulation, the first ICM congress in Africa and the launch of the first State of the World’s Midwifery Report (SoWMy). It was also during her term that the UN health agencies (H4) identified the midwifery workforce as key to improving maternal and newborn health, as well as the need for 350,000 more midwives globally. 

As part of our centennial celebration, and our efforts to document the history of midwifery, we sat down with Bridget to explore how the profession evolved over her presidency and how her career contributed to the ICM we know today. 

The needs and rights of disabled people have been deeply neglected; they frequently encounter obstacles in accessing services and information on sexual and reproductive health. Often, healthcare professionals are not prepared to provide the care that disabled people need.

This month, just in time for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we’re passing the mic to Dr. Jewelles Smith, a feminist disability activist, scholar, writer, and artist. Smith uses her voice to amplify the issues of human rights, disability and women through research, mainstream media, and education.

As ICM member midwives’ associations (MAs) know, all MAs pay a regular membership fee that supports ICM’s work to strengthen professional associations of midwives worldwide. While national and economic contexts and circumstances vary and evolve with time, it occasionally happens that an ICM MA is unable to fulfil its membership contribution fee.

This was recently the case for the Fiji Midwifery Society (FMS), who has been an active member of ICM since 2019. 

The Australian College of Midwives and the New Zealand College of Midwives, however, didn’t want to see the FMS lose the benefits of its ICM membership, and therefore decided to join forces to pay FMS’ membership fees. Previously, the Australian and New Zealand Colleges of Midwives also supported the Papua New Guinea Midwifery Society when they were unable to meet ICM’s membership requirements.  

It's this type of international empathy and collaboration that makes ICM proud to represent its global community of midwives. ICM encourages all member midwives’ associations to stay aware of regional events and affairs and other associations’ challenges and to encourage dialogue between one another. 

Go to our website and download social media graphics to promote the 33rd ICM Triennial Congress!

UNFPA East and Southern Africa Regional Offices, together with the Alliance to Improve Midwifery Education (AIME), hosted a regional midwifery education workshop in Nairobi Kenya from November 14-16th.

The workshop brought together AIME partners: UNFPA, WHO, UNICEF, ICM, LSTM, Jhpiego, Laerdal Global Health, USAID Momentum and midwifery representatives, including global, regional and country partners working on midwifery education to share and review new technical updates, resources, activity plans and share positive efforts being made to improve the quality of midwifery education. 

"The AIME workshop was timely, as it brought out the key issue which most midwives of today and educators are struggling with,” said Sarah Ngoma, President of the Midwives’ Association of Zambia (MAZ). "If every midwife can retain these key competencies and apply them in their clinical practice, many lives of women and babies will be saved.” 

For #ICM100, we're looking back at the #HistoryOfMidwifery  

In this recently published narrative of ICM's organisational history, authors Joyce Thompson, Joan Walker, Ann Thomson, and Margaret Peters explore their findings of ICM over the years, using available archival information about ICM and midwifery. The book highlights how ICM has strengthened and supported its member associations in order to protect, promote, and empower #midwives and women. 

Please note with our sincere apologies the misspelling of Ann Thomson’s name in the previous edition of our newsletter. 

As we make space for our member associations and head office team members worldwide to honour their respective celebrations this holiday season, we would like to inform you that ICM channels will be offline from 23 December 2022 to 3 January 2023. 

We wish you a safe, happy and healthy holiday season.