HNN is pleased to celebrate International Day of the Midwife on the 5th of May, 2022 together with the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), our partners and members. This year the theme of the day is “100 Years of Progress” with the aim of bringing together midwives from around to the world and to advocate for investment in quality midwifery care everywhere, improving sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health in the process.
See the message below from ICM:
“As we prepare to celebrate #IDM2022, we’re conscious that each passing year feels more significant for midwives and midwifery than the one before it. In 2020, we celebrated the WHO-sanctioned Year of the Midwife. Last year, we we collaborated with UNFPA, ICM and WHO to release a very significant piece of midwifery research, The State of the World’s Midwifery (SoWMy) 2021 Report. And this year, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the International Confederation of Midwives. What these milestones don’t reflect is how every midwife — each of you — has contributed to the increase in awareness and representation our profession is receiving. We see it in the marches you lead, the demands you make and the women and newborns you support and protect.
In marking ICM’s centennial, our goal is to ensure our global community recognises that this anniversary is so much more than an organisational achievement. It’s about exploring our collective and individual progress and acknowledging how far we have come. From the establishment of the first midwifery schools to the appointment of the first chief midwives and to the increasing numbers of direct-entry midwifery programmes and more and more women being able to access continuity of care from a known midwife, the past 100 years have seen the most consequential achievements of our age-old profession. And while we recognise the markers of progress look radically different from one region to the next, it’s important that we save space for our collaborative efforts and what the global evidence unequivocally indicates: increased investments in midwives and midwifery have led to healthier, happier families and communities in every corner of the world. As a global workforce and as individual midwives and midwives’ associations, we must continue advancing and mobilising this evidence to ensure the next 100 years are even more monumental for midwives, women, newborns and all people.”
Download the #IDM2022 Advocacy Toolkit and Resource Pack here.
- Join the #IDM2022 Virtual Party (CEST afternoon) here at 1pm CET, 12pm BST
- Join the #IDM2022 Virtual Party (CEST evening) here at 8pm CET, 7pm BST