White Ribbon Alliance in Tanzania

White Ribbon Alliance Tanzania

Tanzania is suffering from a severe shortage of midwives. In Tanzania, there is one midwife for every forty women in labor. Meanwhile, the size of nursing and midwifery school classes is rapidly decreasing—midwifery schools which once trained nearly three hundred students each year, now have an average class size of twenty-five students. Low pay and poor working conditions have combined to make midwifery an unattractive profession.

The public has a poor perception of midwives, which impacts the number of women who deliver in health facilities—half of women in Tanzania chose not to give birth in a health facility.

WRA Tanzania is working to improve the public perception of midwives and to draw attention to the need for improved working conditions. On International Day of the Midwife, WRA Tanzania launched short film “What I Want is Simple: made by women who are both mothers and midwives and hosted a meeting with media managers to discuss the role that the media can play in promoting midwifery as a profession, improving public perception and influencing government prioritization of the issue.