Alliance of African Midwives

My organization is called the Alliance of African Midwives. The African Alliance of Midwives is a nonprofit organization whose purpose it is to improve the health of women and children in Africa. My mission for the African Alliance of Midwives is to provide comprehensive, quality care to women in pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum that is safe, holistic, loving, and that honours the divine in all people.

I believe that pregnancy and birth are normal states of being and normal life processes. I believe all women should have access to care. Most pregnancies and births are normal, and the greatest safeguards in keeping them that way are education and non-intervention. I believe that spending quality time with women in pregnancy in regular prenatal appointments and giving loving, thorough care are essential to positive birth outcomes in today’s society. I truly trust birth and do not intervene in the birth process unless necessary, as experience has taught me that most births unfold beautifully without outside interventions.

My vision for the world community is that women in the continent of Africa will have access to safe and loving midwifery care. I want all women to believe in themselves and in their bodies. I want women everywhere to know themselves intimately: spiritually, emotionally, and physically. I want for women to rejoice in femininity, in pregnancy, in the miracle that we can create and give life! I want for women everywhere to be self-confident and to get what they want for their births. I want for all normal births to stay that way, to be free from intervention. And I want for women who experience complications to receive loving and safe care that they understand. I want for midwives to be educated and to provide safe and available care to all women who seek for us.

I believe that birth has real power to change the Africa and the world. I believe that the world can change one birth, one mother, one baby, one family at a time. I will do my part by striving to constantly walk with all midwives and organizations in this continent of mine to make it happen.


Comments

Alliance of African Midwives — 2 Comments

  1. hi,i am a basic life support medic.what i wanted to do was medecine then gynecology.i realy have a passion for birth.is there any where in south africa i can do a midwifery course straight and not via nursing?

    • Here in South Africa there are no direct-entry midwifery courses. A person would need to do a full nursing qualification of four years. The curriculim is not the same as the US/UK or other countries who change a hospital program to a university degree, instead the nursing program is a four year diploma, same as other counrries but diploma course. To make everybody happy they give each nurse an extra medal on the shoulder and certified them as Community, Mental Health, and Midwiwves to keep the nurses happy. Therefore, everybody is a nurse midwife, with minimal midiwfery experience, as to the previous courses prior 1990, where midiwfery was a full year course after general nursing.

      Previously, South African had a direct entry midwifery program, but this program was stopped by the doctors and forced women to give birth in hospitals and clinics. The last group of midiwves disappeared in 1975, some of these midwives went to work in clinics to keep some form of employment and others went undergroup. Currently, South Africa has a Society of Midwifery. Most of the midwives in South Africa are hospital trained and not so much to give care at home, although there are a few home birth midiwves, the majority of midwives are medicalise. Africa was forced to abandon their cultural practices to make way for western medicine with disasterous outcomes.

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