Midwives Save Lives
Photographer: Paolo Patruno
Exhibit Title: Midwives Save Lives
Location: Ethiopia
Midwives are women, mothers, who devote their life to providing safe motherhood to others women and mothers.
Access to skilled care from a trained midwife during pregnancy, childbirth and after delivery is key to saving a mother’s life and that of her child.
Midwives, who are overwhelmingly women, typically endure low status, poor pay and a lack of support despite the enormous responsibility they bear.
When they are properly trained, empowered and supported, midwives in the community offer the most cost-effective and high-quality path to universal access to maternal health care. In particular, countries with high rates of maternal mortality need assistance to recruit, train and support professional midwives.
Midwives are women, mothers, who devoted their life providing safe motherhood to others women and mothers.
Access to skilled care from a trained midwife during pregnancy, childbirth and after delivery is key to saving a mother’s life and that of her child.
Every year in Africa, more than 200.000 mothers die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth; every year 1,5 million African children are left without a mother.
A mother's death is a human tragedy, affecting families and communities.
A great many of these deaths are preventable, when women have access to quality prevention, diagnostic, and treatment services, when pregnancy and childbirth are attended by skilled health professionals.
Quality midwifery services that are coordinated and integrated within communities and within the health system ensure that essential care can be provided throughout pregnancy, birth and beyond. Midwifery services also facilitate referrals of mothers and newborns from the home or health center to the hospital and to the care of obstetricians, pediatricians and other specialists when required.
Midwives, who are overwhelmingly women, typically endure low status, poor pay and a lack of support despite the enormous responsibility they bear.
When they are properly trained, empowered and supported, midwives in the community offer the most cost-effective and high-quality path to universal access to maternal health care. In particular, countries with high rates of maternal mortality need assistance to recruit, train and support professional midwives.
Midwives often introduce women to the health system and ensure that women and their babies receive a continuum of skilled care during pregnancy, childbirth, and in the important days and weeks after birth.
Midwives provide to protect the health of the mother and baby providing pre-pregnancy advice and health education, offering general health information, including reproductive health care and family planning, assisting women to successfully breastfeed.
I am a photographer focused on humanitarian issues and social-documentary, travelling throughout Africa over the past ten years; I’m interested in documenting global topics, including health care, education, human rights, sustainable development, poverty.
I’m working on my personal long term project about the Maternity crisis in Africa and developing countries.
AMREF Canada
www.amrefcanada.org
Paolo Patruno
www.paolopatrunophoto.org
www.birthisadream.org
info@paolopatrunophoto.org
www.facebook.com/paolopatrunophoto
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