Midwives

Midwives are the main workforce dealing with reproductive, maternal, and newborn care in these healthcare facilities. Their work includes basic emergency obstetric care as defined in the standard package of activities for each level of facility. The National Maternal and Child Center (NMCHC) was constructed with official development aid from Japan. It opened in April 1997 and is one of the top referral hospitals for perinatal care in Cambodia. NMCHC is 150-bedded hospital with 7000 deliveries per year. Although the number of deliveries per year has not changed for almost 15 years, the number of the caesarean sections has increased annually from 340 in 1997 to 1898 in 2012. The referral rate from the province was 40% in 2012. As well as being a top maternal referral hospital, NMCHC also provides in-service training for nurses, midwives, and doctors in all fields of reproductive health. In NMCHC, all emergency patients, including women in labor, are seen by the doctors, and care is provided by nurses and midwives. Normal vaginal deliveries are conducted mostly by midwives, and doctors are called only when there are any abnormalities (such as cases of prolonged labor, fetal distress, or eclampsia/pre-eclampsia, which may need medication, vacuum extraction, or caesarean section). To cope with the increasing number of high risk deliveries which are referred from the hospitals and clinics in Phnom Pehn and also health centers and hospitals in surrounded provinces with limited staffing, there is an urgent need to improve the standard of midwifery for managing deliveries safely and providing maximum satisfaction to mothers and their families. (Matsumoto Y, Egami Y, Rathavy T (2013) Management of Women in Labor in a Referral Hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: A Case Discussion Study)

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Last date updated on December, 2024