Unemployed Nurses Worked As Midwives

A policy-maker from Mindanao said that Nurses Assigned in Rural Service (NARS) Project toward organizing a larger number of jobless nurses must be built up by the congress. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, Cotabato Representative said that it would make a lot of sense to expand the NARS, and perhaps knock additional 10,000 nurses for employment as midwives in municipalities with the highest motherly and infant humanity rates. This means will save thousands of mothers and infants who are at risk each year because of pregnancy and birth-related complications. The lack of access to skilled delivery attendants affects the disappointingly soaring number of mothers and infants being gone during pregnancy and childbirth. According to govt. health surveys 162 mothers die out of every 10,000 births, and that 14 percent of all deaths among Filipino women may be attributed to pregnancy or to childbirth-related causes. Three out of every four maternal deaths happen to very young women 15 to 19 years old, while the infant mortality is unusually high at 24 out of every 1,000 live births. Poor mothers still give birth at home in rural areas and even in metropolitan slums, frequently there were no trained attendants.

Taliño-Mendoza stated that nurses who serve as midwives under the NARS could gain specialized training; afterwards it will help them to secure more beneficial jobs here and abroad. For instance, in US there is an increasing demand for certified nurse-midwives. They are identified as highly developed practitioners with specialized education, training, and skill in both nursing and midwifery. Taliño-Mendoza was one of the benefactors of the planned Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood, and Population Development Act. To be able to reduce unwanted pregnancies and lessen the risk of both maternal and infant mortality, the bill was passed to increase public awareness on reproductive health, advance responsible parenthood, and precede to safe and modern family planning methods. The survey had shown that only 12,000 of 100,000 nurses every year are able to achieve lucrative employment here and abroad. [via]