Hamlin College of Midwives' mission in Ethiopia
Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia is responsible for realizing Dr Catherine Hamlin’s original intention for travelling to Ethiopia: the training of midwives to assist in the countryside and prevent these terrible fistula injuries.
Professionally trained midwives are essential to both the prevention of obstetric fistula and improving maternal health. In rural Ethiopia, however, just 50% of women have access to medical care during their pregnancy. That’s why in 2007 Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia established the Hamlin College of Midwives.
The importance of these health professionals cannot be overemphasized. Every day, more than 830 women around the world die as a result of complications from pregnancy and childbirth. According to the International Confederation of Midwives, if midwives were present during birth up to 90% of these deaths could be prevented.
The Hamlin College of Midwives' approach
The Hamlin College of Midwives in Ethiopia recruits women from rural communities in Ethiopia to learn the Hamlin Model of Care during a four-year Bachelor of Science in Midwifery program. The full curriculum is certified under the International Confederation of Midwives, and it includes the precondition that students conduct at least 40 deliveries before they graduate.
Upon graduation, Hamlin Midwives return to their villages as health leaders in their communities – today staffing over 90 rural midwifery clinics in remote areas where their skills were desperately needed.
The Hamlin College of Midwives in Ethiopia is building the local midwifery workforce year by year, working towards the goal of providing a midwife for every pregnant woman in Ethiopia.
Who attends the College?
The Hamlin College of Midwives in Ethiopia commenced training its first intake of students in November 2007. Girls with an interest in maternal health, and who have completed preparatory classes, are selected from rural schools in the areas where birth attendants are most desperately needed.
Students have been recruited across Ethiopia including Bahir Dar (Amharra area), Mekele (Tigray area), Yirgalem (Southern Nations area), Oromia and the Sidamo region in the south.
What qualifications are undertaken?
Students undertake a comprehensive 4-year Bachelor of Science degree and must conduct at least 40 deliveries during the training period.
On graduation, the midwives are deployed back to the rural provinces they came from, where they are familiar with the people and the language. This increases the likelihood that they will stay, providing long-term midwifery services to a population with so few health services.
New graduates are placed with another midwife in an antenatal clinic with the support of an obstetrician-gynecologist and ambulance service from our own rural fistula hospitals.
Their impact is nowhere more evident than in the village of Birakat, where only 36 women gave birth at the government health center. That number has now increased to 200 since they began their work in the village.
In 2022, the College began offering a new Master of Science Degree in Clinical Midwifery, with a first intake of twenty students.
As a postgraduate qualification, the Masters consists of 55 credit hours of study and 582 hours of clinical practice that will be completed over two and a half years. Hamlin’s goal is to scale up this program and increase future intakes to thirty students annually.
Interesting stats:
- There are over 90 Hamlin-supported midwifery clinics established across rural Ethiopia.
- The impact of a Hamlin Midwife is remarkable: when a midwife arrives at a clinic, new cases of fistula drop to almost zero in nearby villages.
- Every student midwife attends the college on a full Hamlin scholarship, funded by our generous donors.
The unique and intensive training I received at the College, incorporated with clinical placements, made me a highly respected professional among my own community, whom I have been serving for the past four years… I would encourage those young girls studying midwifery at the College to study hard; let’s realize Dr. Catherine’s dream of ‘a midwife for every woman’.
Hindiya
Help finish what Catherine started
