Cadee, Franka

Jan, Rafat

English

eCommons@AKU

Journal of Asian Midwives (JAM) Volume 6 Issue 2 Article 1 12-2019 Introducing ICM’s President – Author of Editorial December, 2019 Rafat Jan Aga Khan University, rafat.jan@aku.edu Franka Cadee International Confederation of Midwives, President@internationalmidwives.org Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.aku.edu/jam  Part of the Nursing Midwifery Commons Recommended Citation Jan, R, & Cadee, F. Introducing ICM’s President – Author of Editorial December, 2019. Journal of Asian Midwives. 2019;6(2):1–3. Introducing ICM’s President – Author of Editorial December, 2019  December 20, 2019 The Express Tribune, Karachi News Paper published the article titled ‘Kate Middleton, pens heartfelt letter to midwives’. The Duchess of Cambridge wrote a touching letter to the midwives at Kingston Hospital in London. What a good ending of 2019 and starting of 2020 when next year will be the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife! For this volume Ms. Franka Cadee wrote an editorial. She is a midwife and have lived and worked in low, middle and high-income countries, which supports her to understand the realities of the field. She has a passion for the rights of women to quality, respectful evidence-based maternity care, which in most instances is care from a midwife. She is presently the President of ICM.   Warm regards, Rafat Jan Lead Editor, Journal of Asian Midwives   Reference Kate Middleton pens heartfelt letter to midwives after visit to London hospital | The Express Tribune [Internet]. The Express Tribune. 2020 [cited 13 January 2020]. Available from: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2126471/4-kate-middleton-pens-heartfelt-letter-midwives-visit-london-hospital/        1Journal of Asian Midwives (JAM), Vol. 6, Iss. 2 []Published by eCommons@AKU, Year of the Midwife in Asia The ICM President welcome the nomination of coming year, 2020, by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife! Many of us think this is a great opportunity to showcase these professions. Across the globe Nursing and Midwifery are a fundamental part of health care systems in general and maternity care systems in particular.  In fact without midwives and nurses, most countries will neither be able to achieve the sustainable development goals nor reach Universal Health Coverage. In this editorial we will focus specifically on midwives.  Readers of the Journal of Asian Midwives will be very much aware that Nursing and Midwifery are indeed different professions, and conflating these professions can confuse and so endanger women’s rights to receive skilled reproductive and sexual healthcare by a midwife [1]. We could not resist the temptation to change the title of our editorial ‘Year of the Midwife in Asia’, even though it is of course also the year of our much respected colleagues, Nurses. Unfortunately, across the globe many believe that midwifery is simply another branch of nursing, like mental health nursing, theatre nursing or community nursing. This risk for midwifery, as the smaller profession of the two, is that its unique status and approach gets smothered by that of nursing.  Hence this editorial focuses particularly on midwifery.   First of all, midwifery is widely recognised as the older of the two professions, some even say it is the second oldest profession in the world [2].  Secondly, since midwifery deals with pregnancy and childbirth, normal life events in most women’s lives, midwives, unlike nurses, generally do not deal with ill people, but quite the opposite they deal with healthy women (and their families).  Midwifery is therefore more based on a more social model of childbirth than on a medical model [3].  Thirdly, midwifery has more of an advocating role than nursing, as midwives advocate for women and their needs in both extremes of under-resourced and over-medicalised maternity care systems [3]. For this reason the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) sees the year of the Midwife as the first year of the Century of the Midwife and will celebrate Midwives 2Journal of Asian Midwives (JAM), Vol. 6, Iss. 2 []https://ecommons.aku.edu/jam/vol6/iss2/1globally through many different activities including profiling six 19th Century Midwives of impact per ICM Region. Who will that be for Asia?  Quoting Franka Cadée “Midwives have to be political, because standing up for women in a patriarchal world is always going to require fighting!” We also like to remind our readers that 2020 will be the year of the tri-annual ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) Congress.  The next ICM Congress will be held in June on the island of Bali in Indonesia.   Enjoy reading! Franka Cadée President, International Confederation of Midwives (ICM)  References 1. Renfrew MJ, Ateva E, Dennis-Antwi JA, Davis D, Dixon L, Johnson P, Kennedy HP, Knutsson A, Lincetto O, McConville F, McFadden A. Midwifery is a vital solution-What is holding back global progress?. Birth (Berkeley, Calif.). 2019 Sep;46(3):396. 2. Pezaro, S. (2017) Some people think that midwifery is simply another branch of nursing. The Conversation May 19th, https://theconversation.com/oh-baby-seven-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-midwives-77128  3. MacKenzie Bryers H., van Teijlingen, E. (2010) Risk, Theory, Social & Medical Models: critical analysis of the concept of risk in maternity care, Midwifery 26(5): 488-496.                3Journal of Asian Midwives (JAM), Vol. 6, Iss. 2 []Published by eCommons@AKU,

Introducing ICM’s president – Author of editorial December, 2019

https://ecommons.aku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&amp;context=jam

Introducing ICM’s President – Author of Editorial December, 2019

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