In early December the Maternal & Child Health Journal accepted our latest research paper on maternity care based in Nepal [1]. The first author, Amrit Banstola, is based in Nepal and this exciting paper is co-authored with several Nepal-based collaborators as well as BU Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada. Prof. Simkhada recently moved from Liverpool John Moores University to the University of Huddersfield. The target journal Maternal & Child Health Journal has an Impact Factor of 1.736.
The Government of Nepal is trying to expand and improve the quality of maternal and neonatal health service delivery in more remote areas of the country. However, relatively little is known about the preparedness of maternity care facilities to providing Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) in remote and rural areas. In order to achieve improvement maternal health services in one remote district to help achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Our study assesses what birthing centres exist and how ready these are to provide EmOC services in Taplejung District.
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health
Reference:
- Banstola, A., Simkhada, S., van Teijlingen, E., Bhatta, S., Lama, S., Adhikari, A, Banstola A., The availability of emergency obstetric care in birthing centres in rural Nepal: A cross-sectional survey, Maternal & Child Health Journal. (accepted).

EMA held its 6th triennial education conference in Malmo, Sweden from the 28-29 November 2019. Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler and Professor Sue Way had three abstracts accepted, two of which highlighted units of learning in our midwifery undergraduate programme (Evaluating the student experience of introducing newborn infant physical theory into a pre-registration midwifery programme in the UK and An evaluation of the student experience of peer facilitated learning) and a further one which was focused on a national collaborative project on grading practice (Developing a set of key principles to achieve consistency in assessing pre-registration midwifery competency in practice in the UK). The opening keynote speaker at the EMA Conference was Fran McConville – Midwifery Expert at WHO. Fran presented on ‘Strengthening Quality Midwifery Education for Universal Health Coverage 2030’. Our takeaway message from her presentation was the following important statement: “When midwives are educated to international standards, and midwifery includes the provision of family planning……more than 80% of all maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths could be averted”.



















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