Ensuring the First Breath: A Growing Accountability of Midwifery in Bangladesh

Abstract

Successful women empowerment relies on providing quality infrastructure facilities to avail maternal healthcare on the national level. In this regard, ensuring women’s access to quality midwifery services is an important consideration. The major intervention for safe maternity is to be enhanced to enable the presence of the skilled midwifery to ensure the quality emergency obstetric care. Therefore, the scope of practice of a midwife is very critical in the supervision of the orderly physiological processes of pregnancy, labor, birth, and the postpartum phase. The midwife as an autonomous practitioner is expected to be competent and accountable for her practice. In Bangladesh, the number of women having the baby at home by unskilled personnel is quite high. Therefore, the government strives to educate midwives and commits to reducing maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity. This study explores the contemporary situation of maternity health to provide a critical understanding of the growing importance of the role of midwifery in Bangladesh. With this, the paper examines the way maternity services in Bangladesh transformed from a social to a medical model over the twentieth century and infers how the social agenda was part of this process.