A Profile on International Midwife Assistance Organization

International Midwife Assistant is a charitable, non-profit, humanitarian organization that seeks to improve the standard of maternal/infant care in developing nations and areas of crisis. IMA achieves their objective by:

• Placing midwives, health care providers in hospitals, clinics or homes
• Training midwives and other health care workers
• Deliver medical supplies, aids and medications
• Raising awareness to the cause by educational presentations and slide shows

The IMA has three programs.
The Teso Safe Motherhood Project in Uganda.

“Through the TSMP clinic, IMA offers general medical care, prenatal, vaccination, family planning services and a birth center, to help the poorest of the poor in the Teso region of Uganda. IMA midwives help local practitioners provide quality prenatal and birth services, as well as general medical care, to increasing numbers of men, women and children from surrounding poor communities. Through these services, women receive the assistance they need to help ensure safe, healthy pregnancies. The clinic staff also conducts weekly mobile outreach clinics to remote rural areas.”

Home Based Life Saving Skills in collaboration with The Colorado Haiti Project in Haiti
Plagued by social and political violence, Haiti has the highest rate of maternal/infant mortality in the Americas. Malnutrition and AIDS situation are considered to be the worst in the Americas as well. With no access to basic health care, IMA teaches Home Based Life Saving Skills.

“This summer, an IMA volunteer accompanied a representative from the Colorado Haiti Project to teach 34 Haitian women information and skills to prevent and manage maternal and newborn problems. The plan is to create a training cascade that will engage women as health educators in all the villages in the Petit Trou de Nippes region. IMA is teaching Home Based Life Saving Skills (HBLSS) – a family focused training and community mobilization program that relies on community meetings, consensus building, and the use of demonstrations and picture cards to share information on measures to prevent and manage common obstetric emergencies at the home and community level.”

Community Midwife Training Program in Afghanistan
Afghanistan has the one of the worst infant/maternal mortality rates in the world. During the Taliban rule, access to health care was “severely restricted”.

“In April 2004, along with members of the Afghanistan Relief Organization and IMA's future executive director, two midwives from Colorado traveled to Afghanistan. The IMA midwives provided two weeks of skills workshops for village midwives in Paghman. They also provided visiting nurse services in Kartay Char neighborhood, conducted family planning workshops, and spent two weeks conducting deliveries with midwives and students in two Kabul maternity hospitals. IMA staff also traveled to Bamiyan Province, one of Afghanistan's two poorest provinces, which became the site of IMA's most-recent project beginning in March 2005. “

“…22 new midwives graduated from the program in March 2006 and returned to the rural and under-served areas from which they came. IMA is confident the intensive training the 22 midwives received has led to an improved standard of care for the women of Bamiyan Province. “

Read more about these programs here.

What an amazing organization. Such bravery in visiting war-torn countries with the passion to preserve the integrity of birth! If you’d like to learn more about this organization visit www.midwifeassist.org. If want to donate, visit this link.

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