New college major opens for midwives

Universities in China will recruit more students into the midwifery major to ease the severe shortage of trained midwives in China, officials from China's top health authority said on Tuesday.

The total number of midwives, gynecologists and obstetricians in China was about 460,000 in 2012, accounting for only 59 percent of the total demand, according to a 2014 report on the state of midwifery released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, United Nations Population Fund China(UNFPA) and World Health Organization China (WHO) on Tuesday.

The report, titled A Universal Pathway, A Woman's Right to Health, revealed that there are major deficits in the midwifery workforce in 73 African, Asian and Latin American countries, including China.

The report urges these countries to invest in midwifery education and training to close the gap.

"Midwives make enormous contributions to the health of mothers and newborns and the well-being of entire communities," said Mr. Arie Hoekman, UNFPA Representative to China.

China is in severe shortage of midwives. On average only three midwives are available for every 100,000 people, said Pang Ruyan, deputy chairwoman of China Maternal and Child Health Care Association.

In contrast, the figure is 70 for Sweden, 63 for Britain, and 45 for the Philippines, she said.

"Scarcity of midwives in China is greater than many other developing countries," she said. "We have conducted an investigation at a hospital, which completes about 5,000 birth deliveries a year, but the hospital only has two midwives to finish all the work."

According to Zhang Yang, deputy head of the international department of National Health and Family Planning Commission, 16 million babies were born in China last year, with a hospital birth delivery rate of 99.5 percent. Maternal morality rate was 23.2 per 100,000 last year, and baby morality rate was 9.5 per 1,000, which are quite low compared with other developing countries, she said.

However, as China is gradually relaxing its family planning policy and allows more families to have two children, 2 million more babies are expected to be born every year, creating an urgency for more midwives, Zhang said.

Song Li, an official for maternal and baby health care at the commission, said most midwives in China are graduates of vocational schools or junior colleges, and midwives with college education are rare.

Midwives are commonly regarded as nurses rather than as an independent profession in China, and they lack enough opportunities for career advancement, causing drainage of talent, she said.

To cultivate more qualified midwives, the National Health and Family Planning Commission is cooperating with the Ministry of Education to encourage colleges to set up majors on midwifery and increase enrollment, she added.

Eight universities, including Fudan University in Shanghai and Tianjin Medical University in Tianjin, have set up the major this year and will start to enroll students majoring in midwifery next year. Few colleges in China offered this major before.

"We have received applications from many other universities to establish the major, and hopefully in the future more universities will offer midwifery education," Zhang said.