The 15th of October marks Mother’s day in Malawi, a national holiday honoring all mothers across the country.
As well as a celebration days like these also act as a reminder of mothers who have died in the process of giving birth and so many who suffered complications during this process.
In Malawi, pregnancy is also referred as to pakati in the local language, which means uncertainty of the outcome -either life or death for the mother or the baby- which leaves many expectant mothers not celebrating this part of life until the baby arrives.
Malawi has one of the world’s highest maternal mortality ratios globally.
However, there are many efforts in place to reduce this including strong government commitment through the national Safe Motherhood initiative.
The Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health’s (CMNH) Making it Happen programme is working together with theMinistry of Health, training institutions and other key stakeholders in Malawi to contribute to a reduction in maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity by increasing the availability and improving the quality of Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EOC&NC).
The Making it Happen program in Malawi is being implemented across five districts of the Southern region.
Since its inception the programme has trained 152 nurse-midwives, clinical officers and tutors in EOC&NC, and 32 local Master Trainers who can assist in and run the training themselves, thus making it a sustainable programme.
CMNH has also furnished 3 midwifery training colleges with full sets of EOC&NC training equipment.
All these efforts are geared to make pregnancy and childbirth safer for our mothers in Malawi.
