This post was written jointly by Emma Saloranta and Julia Wiklander. Julia is at the Nordic Midwifery Congress, representing Girls' Globe and The Mom Pod.
The Nordic Midwifery Congress (NJF) is taking place in Gothenburg, Sweden, 12-14 May 2016. The Congress brings together hundreds of midwives mainly from the Nordic region - Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland and The Faroe Islands - to share experiences, lessons learned, innovations and stories about midwives, birth, maternal and newborn health, sexual and reproductive health, breastfeeding, and more. The Congress is a great opportunity for people in the field of midwifery and maternal and newborn health to learn from each other, network and make new connections that enable them to become even better and more efficient in ensuring that mothers and babies not only survive, but thrive through pregnancy, birth and postpartum period.
The theme of this year's Congress is #Midwives4All. In the Nordic countries, pretty much every pregnant woman has access to a skilled and trained midwife - and most uncomplicated, low risk pregnancies and births are routinely handled by midwives, from prenatal care through labor and during postpartum. Nordic countries therefore have a great deal of experience to share, that can be useful not only between the Nordic nations but also for other countries who aim to reach a similar level of midwifery and maternal and newborn health coverage for their mothers and babies. There is a long history of partnerships and sharing lessons learned between health practitioners in these countries, which has enabled them to develop healthcare systems that, while not perfect, are able to reach almost every single mother and baby, despite their socio-economic status, location, ethnicity or other such factor.
Yet, midwifery and sexual and reproductive health and rights is under pressure in the Nordic countries. Hildur Kristjánsdóttir, President of the Nordic Federation of Midwives spoke at the opening ceremony about the important role that midwives have to influence politics and make their voices heard. Kristjánsdóttir mentioned that midwives need to be in leading governmental positions to be able to fight medicalization of childbirth.
Kristina Ljungros, President of RFSU, spoke passionately about the challenges that Europe and other parts of the world is facing to access of sexual education and safe and legal abortion. She encouraged Nordic midwives to unite and stand up for the human rights of women and adolescents.
"There is no place for complacency!" says Frances Day-Stirk, President of the International Confederation of Midwives, who showed that even some of the Nordic countries are seeing an increase in maternal deaths. She also spoke about the challenges that midwives face in their work in the three major cities in Sweden, where midwives are overworked and leaving their jobs, and she encouraged midwives to lead for change.
Day-Stirk mentioned the importance of capitalizing on the opportunities with the Sustainable Development Goals and that midwives have a very important role to be able to reach these goals. "2016 is a pivotal year for midwives. We must be informed, we must use our knowledge and we must raise our voices to lobby for change."
There is substantial evidence indicating that a midwifery-led care model towards pregnancy and birth yields benefits for both mothers and babies. Findings from multiple studies (see here and here, for example) indicate that mothers whose pregnancies and births were attended to by midwives experience less preterm births, less need for an epidural, and less medical interventions, instrumental births and episiotomies than births handled by obstetricians.
Promoting women's access to midwives, and ensuring that midwives and nurses have opportunities such as the Nordic Midwives Congress to learn from each other, update their knowledge and skills, share lessons learned and experiences and work together as a global community of midwives yields benefits for health professionals, mothers and babies. Expanding such gatherings to other parts of the world and ensuring that the lessons and solutions coming out of NJF reach as wide of an audience as possible is crucial for ensuring that mothers everywhere in the world have access to trained, skilled midwives and that mothers and babies continue to not only survive through pregnancy and birth, but thrive as well.