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Community Midwife Graduation Ceremony in Kunduz

Malin Lager, November 20, 2005

The first batch of Midwife Students from Kunduz Province was celebrated with a graduation ceremony in Kunduz Hotel, 10 november 2005. There were 18 newly graduated midwife students that attended the ceremony and received their certificates.

SCA’s Deputy Country Director Dr Shah Mahmood attended the ceremony: - The task of our midwifes are very important to decrease the maternal mortality rate in Afghanistan. Therefor this training is very important and I want to congratulate all the Midwfie Students today.

The Community Midwife Training Programme is a EC funded project. The training programme contains an 18-months long training and the students are beeing trained how to be skilled birth attendants. After their training they are deployed to primarily serve women and their babies during pregnancy, child birth and postpartum period. The students were all selected from the community after conducting tests and interviews and prepared to go back and work in the community after completed the training.

To address the high maternal mortality rate ratio in underserved areas of Afghanistan, Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has taken the initiative to train midwifes to serve in rural areas. Swedish Committee for Afghanistan is implementing Basic Packages of Health Services (BPHS) in Kunduz Province since October 2003. The Community Midwife Training Programme is an integrated part of the BPHS.

The second batch of midwife students started in mid-October 2005.