Afghanistan
Supporting midwifery education
In 2023, IMA began a partnership with a midwifery school in Afghanistan. For a time, we were able to support the school in many ways. As the government there became increasingly repressive, schools for females were closed beyond the sixth grade. We then switched to a virtual project, translating educational materials into Dari Farsi and making them available, online, to midwives in Afghanistan.
Learning Modules
One exciting part of this project is getting Helping Mothers Survive materials translated into the language of the majority of Afghans, Dari Farsi. We plan to follow with Pashtu translations.
Helping Mothers Survive is a suite of learning modules designed to improve and strengthen the life-saving skills of caregivers who attend to women and their newborns during pregnancy, labor, and birth. Helping Mothers Survive and Helping Babies Survive materials have played a role in most IMA programs. We were thrilled to become a partner of JHPIEGO (John Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics, the developer of the materials) to produce a Dari Farsi version of “Essential Care for Labor and Birth”. This Helping Mothers Survive module emphasizes caring for normal births, so we chose that one to be the first translated.
Since we began, JHPIEGO was de-funded. We believe this makes our project even more vital.
A group of IMA midwives and volunteers utilized these materials to produce a live webinar for the 19-member midwifery faculty that we were supporting in Afghanistan. The training was very enthusiastically received. A video of the webinar was produced and will be available online. Each module that is translated will have an accompanying webinar of the training to access virtually.
We are proud to be committed to helping midwives in Afghanistan as we are able.
IMA's history in Afganistan
In 2004, IMA partnered to establish the first accredited school of midwifery in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
IMA volunteers mentored the Afghan teaching staff and students during the establishment of the Bamiyan Community Midwife Training Program. The local staff carried on running the school themselves, went on to train many more midwives, and did an amazing job lowering both infant and maternal mortality rates in Bamiyan Province.
