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Training Traditional Birth Attendants to
Save Lives: Can it Be Done?
Every year 358,000 women and 3.6 million newborn babies die due to largely preventable complications during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period. In addition, nearly 3 million babies are stillborn, according to a (2011 UNFPA report).
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Most of these deaths are in low-income countries and happen because women have no access to functioning health facilities or to qualified health professionals, notably midwives and others with midwifery skills. Around the world, one third of births take place at home without the assistance of a skilled attendant, according to a 2008 World Health Organization publication. WHO also notes that: “Traditional birth attendants (TBAs), who are not formally trained, do not meet the definition of skilled birth attendants.” The report says that training programs for TBAs “have failed to reduce maternal mortality” because “the short trainings were not adequate to teach an otherwise unqualified person the critical thinking and decision-making skills needed to practice.”
Can traditional birth attendants be trained to become “skilled” or more skilled birth attendants? Now you can read the evidence-based research in POPLINE where there are links to 129 records on Training Birth Attendants and 105 records on Maternal/Neonatal Mortality.
Read an article evaluating the use of cell phones by professional and traditional birth attendants in rural Africa for reporting postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) data.
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