Message from Acting WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu
On International Day of the Midwife today, we honour the lifesaving work of midwives across Africa – the frontline guardians of maternal and newborn health, and critical actors in every health crisis.
Aligned with the momentum of World Health Day 2025 and its theme, Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures, this year’s celebration calls for greater recognition and investment in midwives, the people who make healthy beginnings possible.
In the African Region, where over 1 million newborns and 178 000 mothers die each year, midwives are a lifeline. They deliver skilled, compassionate care across the entire continuum of reproductive and maternal health, often in the most difficult and resource-limited settings. Their efforts have been pivotal in reducing maternal mortality, with the regional average dropping from 727 deaths per 100 000 live births in 2000, to 442 in 2023.
The 2025 theme, Midwives: Critical in Every Crisis, reflects a challenging reality. Midwives serve in fragile health systems, in conflict zones, through natural disasters and pandemics. In many cases, they are the only providers of sexual and reproductive health services in their communities.
Despite a projected shortage of 6.1 million health workers in the African Region by 2030, important progress has been made. Between 2013 and 2022, the number of midwives nearly doubled, from 173 269 to over 334 000. This growth reflects what is possible with political will, coordinated investment and focused strategies.
WHO continues to work closely with Member States to expand competency-based midwifery education, improve workforce density, and embed midwives in national health and emergency preparedness strategies.
In 2024, Member States endorsed the Africa Health Workforce Investment Charter, a shared commitment to long-term investment in health workers. Zimbabwe’s new Investment Compact, for example, will mobilize an additional US$ 166 million annually for three years to strengthen its health workforce, with midwives at the centre.
Still, too many midwives work without proper tools, pay, protections or opportunities for advancement. Their voices are often excluded from the policy decisions that affect their work, and the lives of the people they serve.
We must act. Governments should ensure that midwives are integrated into emergency preparedness plans, protected in crisis response, and supported with mental health resources and fair working conditions. Education must evolve to equip them with skills in trauma-informed care, conflict sensitivity and leadership.
When midwives are trained, respected and empowered, health systems grow stronger, and every mother and child has a better chance at life.
WHO stands with midwives, today and every day. Let us move beyond symbolic recognition.
Let’s act, because midwives are not only critical in every crisis. They are essential to every solution.
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